TT: The Merchant of Broadway

The big news in New York theater this week is the opening of the Broadway transfer of the Public Theater’s production of The Merchant of Venice. Accordingly, The Wall Street Journal asked me to write a special review for today’s Greater New York section. Here’s an excerpt.
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When I reviewed the Public Theater’s Central Park production of “The Merchant of Venice” in June, I said that it might end up on Broadway, and that it deserved to. This has now happened, and the main reason for the transfer is, needless to say, Al Pacino. Even so, what was true six months ago is still true today: Mr. Pacino is a galvanic Shylock, but this “Merchant” would be more than good enough to play on Broadway no matter who was in the title role. The best news is that Daniel Sullivan and Mark Wendland, the director and set designer, have managed to take a site-specific outdoor production and move it to the proscenium stage of the Broadhurst Theatre without any loss of theatrical potency. If anything, the show is more tightly focused in its smaller indoor home.
Shakespeare on Broadway has tended in recent seasons to be spotty, usually because of the stunt casting that makes such productions as Jude Law’s “Hamlet” financially feasible. Fortunately, Mr. Pacino’s performance, in which he plays Shylock as an old-fashioned “stage Jew” driven to the edge of madness by his lust for revenge, is no stunt. He is a veteran stage actor who knows how to nail every line to the auditorium’s back wall, and even if you think he’s flirting with caricature–which he is–you’ll find the results enthralling…
Would that the cheap seats were a whole lot cheaper, but don’t begrudge Mr. Pacino his big-name salary. He’s earning every cent of whatever he’s being paid–and then some. You’ll never see a more exciting “Merchant of Venice,” or a more thought-provoking one.
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The print version of the Journal‘s Greater New York section only appears in copies of the paper published in the New York area, but the complete contents of the section are available on line, and you can read my review of The Merchant of Venice by going here.