Merchant of Venice

Cal Shakes, is NOT a roofing company: it is the diminutive moniker of the California Shakespeare Theater, and is currently performing THE MERCHANT OF VENICE at the Bruns Memorial Theater in Orinda.

Given the recent events of the Middle East and Malibu, this play could have served as a good homeopathic antidote for the vitriol spewed by Nasrallah, Gibson and their ilk.

With interest rates inexorably climbing and adjustable rate mortgages causing facial tics for over-leveraged homeowners, the petty usury for which Shylock was vilified, pales by comparison. Then too, people actually pay these days for the privilege of giving up a pound of flesh, albeit Goose Flesh: liposuction clinics dot the super-size-me, suburban landscape like Starbucks, Kinkos and Cigarettes Cheaper stores.

While Shylock humbly defends his property, his faith, his cultural heritage and his nation, Antonio, his self-righteous aggressor, not only acknowledges his anti-Semitism, but, bandies it about like a badge of moral and spiritual ascendancy. By spitting on Shylock’s gabardines, Antonio sees himself, not as a street bully, but as a self-styled Christian Jihadist, in a simmering holy war against the infidels of Venice. It is strange that such ludicrous paradigms enjoy the longevity that they do. One need never worry about the viability of xenophobia, anti-Semitism, militant ethnocentricity, bigotry, racial hatred and faith-based genocide.

Cal Shakes management politely cautions audiences that director Daniel Fish may offend some members of the audience with his rendering of MERCHANT OF VENICE. Unfortunately, the caveat is well grounded.

At the time of Shakespeare, Europeans were indisputably anti-Semitic, primarily for three insubstantial reasons: one, Jews were not Christian and had driven the last nail into the Christian Plan of Redemption; two, they charged interest on loans; and three, they allegedly performed all the nefarious deeds outlined in such screeds as the Secret Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the Blood Libel and other inventively spurious tracts.

Recognizing that none of these old world grievances would raise even a speck of moral or spiritual indignation within the heartland of Liberal Secularism, director Daniel Fish invents fresh aspersions and degradations for his Shylock. Mister Fish has Shylock scrubbing and bathing himself with money, living in a filthy dumpster, and he has Shylock trotting around on all fours, like a dog, micturating on the legs of Venetian Christians. The question is, why?

Firstly Mister Fish departs from spirit of Shakespeare’s play: the Venetians hated Shylock solely because he was a Jew and charged interest on loans. No embellishment was necessary: to be Jewish alone was sufficient cause for ostracism.

In an era when Muslims freely immigrate to Europe from the Middle East, yet Jews are killed for immigrating to the Middle East from Europe, why try to augment anti-Semitism or try to objectify existing anti-Semitism? Honestly speaking a theater critic is no expert on Middle Eastern affairs: he could barely distinguish the cant of Nasralla and from the rhetoric of Goebbels, nor could he cite the differences between a Scud missile, a Kassam missile, a Katyusha missile or an ordinary canister of Zylgon B.

Mister Fish’s deliberate distortion of Shylock blurs Shakespeare’s focus on the absurd prejudices against Shylock in particular and all Jews in general. Mister Fish’s grotesque portrayal of Shylock seems like an attempt to justify the contempt that the Venetians held for Shylock. Mister Fish’s depiction of Shylock counters the letter and spirit of Shylock’s “If you prick us, do we not bleed” speech. Shylock is a normal human being, in all respects, who happens to be Jewish, period. This concept is central to the entire play yet Mister Fish seems to miss it.

If you want to explore flagrant anti-Semitism in Elizabethan England and Renaissance Venice, or possibly witness a more nuanced permutation of it in California, get thee the Cal Shakes. For tickets call 510 548-3422.

.....................

Reviewed by Jeffrey R Smith of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle