The Merchant of Venice

Delacorte Theater

New York, (212) 539-8750

****

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Director Daniel Sullivan “knocks Shakespeare out of the park” with his take on The Merchant of Venice, said Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal. With Al Pacino in the role of the Jewish moneylender Shylock, the centerpiece of this year’s Shakespeare offerings in New York’s Central Park could easily have been nothing but a one-man show. “The distracting presence of a movie star can be a heavy burden for a classic play to bear,” and Pacino is an actor with a well-known penchant for the “overblown.” But he proves surprisingly “soft-edged” here, and Sullivan surrounds him with a crack cast to create “one of the finest Shakespeare productions I’ve ever seen, period.”

The production handles the ever-present “Shylock problem” with care and originality, said Ben Brantley in The New York Times. The Shylock character is, essentially, “a grotesque, anti-Semitic caricature,” a bloodthirsty villain eager to extract his “pound of flesh” from Antonio should he fail to pay his debt. Many contemporary productions get around this by treating him as a victim of Venice’s Christian nobles. Sullivan, by contrast, positions Shylock as not quite victim or villain, but rather “the very soul of the money-drunk society that he serves and despises.” Pacino—who has “seldom met a play or movie he couldn’t dominate, for better or worse”—remains masterfully subdued here, presenting both sides of the character with convincing skill.

Pacino’s “lower-key approach” keeps the rest of the play in balance, said Brian Scott Lipton in Theatermania.com. With Shylock no longer dominating the proceedings, we’re able to appreciate the rest of the characters, led by Jesse L. Martin’s Gratiano and Hamish Linklater’s Bassanio. The play’s other story lines also take on more importance: We notice, for instance, the depth of the friendship between Bassanio and Antonio—who, after all, only agrees to the risky conditions of Shylock’s loan in order to aid Bassanio’s attempts to woo the heiress Portia. In that role, Lily Rabe delivers the best performance of the night, a sublime turn that cements her status as “the finest stage actress of her generation.”