Shylock: Appropriated

With antisemitism both on the rise and yet purposely dismissed—a not uncommon paradox associated with the world’s oldest prejudice—what better place to reimagine this quirk of political correctness than on a stage, with the most infamous of Jewish fictional characters: the moneylender from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” Shylock.

But rather than simply watch the play about a Jew who demands his pound of Christian flesh, better to give the source material a metafictional spin and psychoanalyze a culture that might otherwise be inclined to cancel such a provocative play.

That’s precisely what is on stage at the Polonsky Shakespeare Center, home of Theatre for a New Audience —way Off-Broadway, running until December 7. A one-man show, “Playing Shylock,” starring the Canadian Jewish actor, Saul Rubinek, reveals itself as a master class in the perils of political correctness and its devastating assault on artistic expression.

Rubinek is a trained Shakespearean who joined the Stratford Ontario Shakespeare Festival as an eight-year-old. He is easily recognizable as a character actor from his nearly 200 screen credits, including TV’s “Frasier” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” and movies such as “Wall Street” and “Unforgiven.”

But he was also born in a displaced persons camp where his father—himself a Polish-Yiddish actor—directed and starred in some of the first productions seen by Holocaust survivors who were, haltingly, returning to civilization.

Rubinek was literally born to play Shylock, especially because his father always wanted to play the part back in Poland, where Shakespeare was often performed in Yiddish. But neither of the Rubineks ever got the chance—“Playing Shylock,” alas, is a misnomer.

That’s because the central premise of the play involves a curtain coming down for good on “The Merchant of Venice”: Shylock doesn’t receive his revenge, and Rubinek has the part stolen out from under him by the spiteful hordes on social media. What if, after receiving fine reviews, the cast shockingly learns during intermission that all future performances are hereby cancelled? Rubinek takes the stage to announce that the unseen cast will not be coming back.

Sorry, folks, in a culture that has become so inhospitable to artistic freedom, the show must not go on.

Sorry, folks, in a culture that has become so inhospitable to artistic freedom, the show must not go on.

Still in Hasidic costume—bitter with disappointment, brimming with reflection, heartbroken over a dream performance undelivered—Rubinek’s unrequited Shylock spends the next two hours conversing with the audience about the subtext of the play, the improbability of Shakespeare’s authorship, the inexorable death of a culture poisoned by rigid multiculturalism, and the dearth of actual Jews cast in theater and film nowadays.

Why was the play within the play cancelled? The anonymous morons with X and Instagram accounts who wield such an outsized influence on our cultural tastes and taboos are raging without reason. The new Dark Ages are upon us, with social media masses caring little for how many theaters actually go dark.

The new Dark Ages are upon us, with social media masses caring little for how many theaters actually go dark.

Is Shylock too “toxic” an antisemitic depiction of Jews? After all, “The Merchant of Venice” was Adolf Hitler’s favorite play. Yet, for the first 300 years after it was first performed, it was more widely produced than “King Lear” and “Hamlet.” For most of the 20th century, however, the play was consigned to the dustbin of problematic, forbidden art. “Playing Shylock” now offers contemporary reasons for keeping the curtain closed.

For instance, with antisemitism once more the rage, could a timely production of “The Merchant of Venice” foment even more hostility against Jews—even in a place like New York City, where Jews, and their imprint on culture, are ubiquitous and undeniable?

If “The Merchant of Venice” can’t be tolerated in Brooklyn, then it’s unfit for cultural consumption everywhere!

A culture that refuses to risk offending the sensitivities of its audience and demands that artists jettison their imaginations will produce derivative and tedious art. Contrary to woke opinion, artistic excellence and cultural appropriation are one and the same.

A culture that refuses to risk offending the sensitivities of its audience and demands that artists jettison their imaginations will produce derivative and tedious art.

As Rubinek observes, “But needing to be the character you play . . .. Is that still acting? Acting is ‘appropriation.’ We take on other lives. Other stories.”

And those stories are not just for show. “The Merchant of Venice” has much to say about Christians and Jews, fathers and daughters, duplicitous friends and broken promises.

The story of Shylock is not entirely fictional, after all. Such a trial once took place in Venice: A Jewish moneylender confined to a ghetto, mocked in the town square, cursed in his transactions, stripped of his possessions and forced to renounce his faith—nearly 350 years before Hitler!

This is, in fact, precisely the time for a Jewish actor—who happens to also look Jewish and possesses the stereotypical #jewface—to remind audiences what Shakespeare was trying to impart at the Globe Theatre. Demanding a pound of flesh in satisfaction of a commercial debt is unnatural for a Jew and unlawful under Jewish law.

The Christians who rob him of his dignity and most precious possessions, and run off with his daughter, have unleashed the Jew who sharpens his knife in court. Can he be blamed for what they made him become? The actual merchant of Venice, Antonio, who was bound to Shylock, could have avoided the moneylender’s vengeance by simply treating him with respect.

It’s a necessary, humanistic object lesson that goes unlearned simply because of the play’s unflattering depiction of Jews and their slavish relationship to money—forced upon them by prejudicial, haughty Christians. Besides, the play’s message extends beyond a business transaction gone awry. It’s also a study in standing for principle, something these Venetian playboys who persecute Shylock know nothing about.

Early in the play, when Shylock discovers that his late wife’s ring has been stolen and hocked for a monkey, he declares that he wouldn’t part with that ring for an entire wilderness. Meanwhile, two of Antonio’s posse dispense with their wedding rings in complete disregard of their marriage vows.

“Playing Shylock” is a public plea for far more than merely allowing Rubinek to play the part. A stifling adherence to identity politics that banishes the Jewish moneylender wouldn’t make the world any safer for Jews, or more abundant in cultural richness.