PLAYING SHYLOCK – REVIEW OF 2024 CANADIAN STAGE PRODUCTION AT BERKELEY ST. THEATRE

Reviewed by James Karas

It starts almost innocently. Saul Rubinek is playing Shylock in a Canadian Stage production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice but he and the rest of the cast are interrupted halfway through a performance and told that the production has been cancelled. The reason given is that the play is incompatible with the times. Very curious. And in the middle of a performance!

Canadian Stage intended to cancel the production the next day and had prepared a mealy-mouthed press release dated the next day to explain its precipitous action. But the pressure got to them and they decided to cancel it on the day it did and when the post-dated press release was leaked.  

Before I continue my review of Playing Shylock I want to lavish praise on Saul Rubinek, the star and only performer. He is on stage for almost an hour and a half performing as the aggrieved actor, as Shylock in parts of The Merchant that he re-enacts and as a Canadian of the theatre with a fascinating background. This is brilliant storytelling, stunning acting and a splendid night at the theatre. Rubinek tells us about his background from being born in a camp in Germany at the end of World War II and his parents bringing him to Canada when he was nine months old. His father was involved in the theatre and he himself has found success in numerous roles in the world of entertainment.

When he enters the stage, he is dressed like Shylock, a Jew, and as the performance continues, he removes all his Jewish attire from yarmulka to prayer shawl. He performs under a huge cross hanging over the stage of the cancelled production. He talks about The Merchant, the actors who performed the play in history, about Jews in the theatre, all interwoven with autobiographical facts. We have the factitious blended with the autobiographical to lend credence to the cancelled production.

 

Saul Rubinek in Playing Shylock. Photo: Dahlia Katz

Rubinek walks around the stage that has a large table and a couple of chairs, addresses the audience frequently and evokes laughter. He leaves no doubt about the essential humanity of Shylock, a role that was not played by a Jew for 300 years after Shakespeare wrote it. Oh yes, it is unlikely that Shakespeare knew any Jews on which to base Shylock and maybe Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, did write The Merchant because he lived in Venice when the play was written and would have known Jews.

Rubinek gives a superb performance of Shylock’s part in the trial scene. The judge was Portia, neither a lawyer nor a judge but who is married to the person for whose benefit the money was borrowed from Shylock. There is no reason to believe that she is not as antisemitic as the rest of the Christians. She pleads eloquently for “the quality of mercy” but only that it be applied to the viciously antisemitic Christians.

Playing Shylock is written by Mark Leiren-Young who wrote a one-act play called Shylock in 1996. That play has some similarities with Playing Shylock but it is a very different. Playing Shylock evolved from the first play after a long period of gestation with numerous changes and the addition of biographical details about Rubinek to give the impression that we are watching a documentary. It is wonderful theatre from Rubinek’s bravura performance to the brilliant and different view of Shakespeare’s play  (except the suggestion that de Vere may have written it) and the informative script.

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Playing Shylock by Mark Leiren-Young continues until November 24, 2024, at the Berkeley St. Theatre, 26 Berkeley St.  Toronto, Ont. https://www.canadianstage.com/

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture, of the Greek Press