AP News, February 4th, 2007
Hypocrisy _ religious and otherwise _ is the theme of a double dose of classics Theatre for a New Audience has brought to off-Broadway's Duke on 42nd Street.
The plays are William Shakespeare's "The Merchant of Venice" and Christopher Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta," two works streaked with outbursts of anti-Semitism that have made them uneasy for today's audiences to watch.
The more potent production is "Merchant" and not just because it is the better play. Director Darko Tresnjak has devised a clear-headed, modern-dress approach to the thorny plot. We are in a world of cell phones, laptops, computer-generated images and high fashion _ men in gray business suits and the women in stylish outfits right out of some trendy magazine. Could it be New York?
That's one of the reasons the invective hurled at Shylock (the Jewish moneylender played by F. Murray Abraham) stings even more. Present-day bigotry is harder to take. We'd like to think we are more enlightened than Venice of centuries ago.
Abraham's Shylock is a man of dignity and, up to a point, of restraint. Only in the courtroom scene, when he demands that pound of flesh from the merchant Antonio for payment of a debt, does Shylock's desire for revenge get the best of him. And proves his undoing.
Abraham has a remarkable physical presence on stage. Piercing eyes, shaved head and a commanding voice that makes him the magnet for every scene. Yet the actor doesn't resort to stereotype and maintains decorum even when righteousness gets the best of him. It makes Shylock's final humiliation all the more unnerving.
"The Merchant of Venice" is an odd play in that despite the seriousness of its themes, it also is a romantic comedy. Its other major story focuses on Portia and a parade of suitors who must choose the correct casket (one of three) if they are to win her hand. Here, those caskets are laptops, one containing a photo of the lovely lady.
As played by Kate Forbes, she's a spirited, sexy woman. Forbes scored last season in the company's production of "All's Well That Ends Well," and she's even better here. The actress handles the play's best-known speech ("The quality of mercy...") with calm reasonableness, making it all the more affecting.
The supporting cast, particularly the Antonio of Tom Nelis and Saxon Palmer's Bassanio, do justice to the considerable poetry that swirls through "The Merchant of Venice."
These actors, Abraham included, are not nearly as successful with "The Jew of Malta," admittedly a more difficult play to pull off. It veers from black comedy to even blacker tragedy. But director David Herskovits opts almost solely for laughs in this crude, cartoonish version that delivers the gruesome tale in big, bold strokes.
That aggressiveness makes for a well-paced, lively and often entertaining production, but the audience's emotional involvement suffers from the almost buffoonish way the director treats the deaths of most of its major characters. And most of them do die.
Tears will not be shed, not even for the title character, Barabas, who comes across as conniving and as murderous as the Christians and Muslims who also populate the play. Marlowe has no kind words for religion of any stripe.
"The Merchant of Venice" and "The Jew of Malta" run through March 11 at the Duke.
