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Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for July 15, 2016

Mister Shylock to you

July 15, 2016 by Terry Teachout

In today’s Wall Street Journal drama column I review a production of The Merchant of Venice in Lenox, Mass. Here’s an excerpt.

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“The Merchant of Venice,” like “The Taming of the Shrew,” is one of the Shakespeare plays that make modern audiences feel increasingly and understandably uncomfortable. To interpret the tale of Shylock’s downfall as anything other than anti-Semitic is seemingly to go against plain common sense. But Shakespeare, being a great dramatist, took great care to give the devil his due, portraying Shylock not as a pasteboard villain but as a man of flesh and blood whose malevolence arises in part from the contempt in which he is held by the community in which he lives. “If you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” he asks us, and his terrible fate is portrayed not as the deserved fate of all Jews but as the result of his individual choice of murder as the instrument of his vengeance. Add a generous helping of exquisite poetry and the result is a permanent masterpiece that makes you squirm in your seat—if it doesn’t, there’s something wrong with you.

MERCHANT PHOTOAll that said, “The Merchant of Venice” inevitably poses problems for actors and directors who are reluctant to give ethnic offense, and the success of their productions necessarily depends on the ingenuity with which they contrive to draw the sting. Tina Packer, to her credit, confronts the problem head on in her thrilling new Shakespeare & Company production, upping the ante as high as possible by boldly underlining the apparent anti-Semitism of Shakespeare’s text— every repetition of such ugly phrases as “villain Jew” and “dog Jew” cracks through the air like lightning—while simultaneously placing it in a wider theatrical context. Her Shylock (Jonathan Epstein) is a cultivated, well-spoken gent, a man at first glance more sinned against than sinning, which makes it all the more shocking (not least to the disapproving members of his own temple) when he lets the mask slip and confesses his thirst for blood.

Performed in the round in a theater that is normally set up as an Elizabethan-style thrust-stage house, Ms. Packer’s production is at once visually spare and unexpectedly opulent in effect. Tyler Kinney’s costumes are old-fashioned and richly colored, while the set, designed by Kris Stone, consists of little more than a white cross painted on the black stage floor and 11 gorgeously lit Venetian-style glass spheres hung from the ceiling. Nothing is permitted to divert your eye from the action, and Ms. Packer has taken to theater in the round as if she’d been directing it all her life. Best of all is the scene in which Shylock delivers his “Hath not a Jew eyes” monologue while three tormentors circle him warily like Jets stalking a Shark. You half expect them to pull switchblades and move in for the kill….

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Read the whole thing here.

Replay: Jacqueline du Pré plays Elgar’s Cello Concerto

July 15, 2016 by Terry Teachout

TV CAMERAJacqueline du Pré, Daniel Barenboim and the London Philharmonic perform the first movement of Elgar’s Cello Concerto on TV in 1967:

(This is the latest in a series of arts-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)

Almanac: Oscar Wilde on charm

July 15, 2016 by Terry Teachout

INK BOTTLE“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”

Oscar Wilde, Lady Windemere’s Fan

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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