RSS
Re-imagined ‘Merchant of Venice’ in New York Fails Horribly Because of Poor Artistic Choices
“The Merchant of Venice” at Classic Stage Company. Photo: publicity release.
William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is one of his most powerful plays. In recent years, there have been some who said it should not be taught or performed because of its anti-Jewish themes.
Early on in the new production of the play at Classic Stage Company in Manhattan, one performer on stage calls it a “problem play.”
I’ve taught the play many times at a high school level, and no student came away hating Jews because Shylock, the Jewish moneylender, is the villain of the play. Art is a reflection of reality — and one character does not represent an entire people.
There are surely large antisemitic elements in the play, including that Shylock is bent on getting his pound of flesh, refusing to have multiple times the money he has lent Antonio (who has mocked him in the past and treated him poorly) returned.
I was looking forward to seeing this production, and how Richard Topol as Shylock would give the “Hath not a Jew eyes,” speech, in which he argues for equality and seeing Jewish people’s humanity.
With rising antisemitism in the world and in America, I looked forward to seeing how the play would be “re-imagined” — as Classic Stage Company promised.
Jewish director Igor Golyak has a kernel of genius in having this staged production as a talk show. But the kernel unfortunately never pops. He abandons a possible Jerry Springer idea for some weak slapstick comedy that doesn’t work in the slightest.
The actors are all high energy and talented. Alexandra Silber, who I’ve seen excellently play Tzeitel in a production of Fiddler on the Roof, is a commanding presence on stage as Portia and fun to watch. Jorge Espinoza has great charm as an idealistic and muscular Bassanio. As Shylock, Richard Topol wears Groucho Marx fake glasses and a fake big nose and he is a good actor, but the play is so off-kilter, there is no power in any of his lines. Gus Birney goes all in with a good amount of gusto as Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she has a lead role in an upcoming play. T.R Knight who plays Antonio, has some good moments.
But I cannot understand what in the world Golyak is trying to do here. Yes, we get it. He wants to show the absurdity of how in Shakespeare’s times, the play was viewed as a comedy and should not be viewed as funny. But in order to do this, one should make sure there is balance and power, not just things that appear different for the sake of being different.
This production is like a promising microwave meal that looks smoking hot at the beginning, and fails because not enough care and craft was taken.
There are two jaw-droppingly absurd moves. The first is to have Richard as Shylock say “Richard is my name.” This is simply infantile. The biggest miss is to think people will care that you have a painted Jewish star and the chanting of the “kel maleh” the prayer recited at funerals, despite scenes earlier, having a puppet perform a sex act on another. You can choose one of the other to have in your play — but using both together is a cheap trick, and destroys tonal consistency.
There is value to abstract art, and not doing everything “on the nose.” But to try to shock simply to be shocking is pointless.
To have “Hava Nagilah” in the show also serves no purpose. A scene where a character is tied down as was Jack Tripper in Three’s Company also has no relation to The Merchant of Venice.
A woman who sat next to me said she’d seen Golyak’s direction of Our Class, which was a play about five Jews and five Catholics in Poland and is inspired by the 1941 pogrom in the Polish village of Jedwabne. I am sorry I did not see it.
It is sadly ironic that the Classic State Company has done away with a classic play, and turned it into a ball of randomness and banality. That some of the women are scantily clad neither helps nor hurts the production.
When you peel off the plastic, this production of The Merchant of Venice has some smoke, but no fire because Golyak, despite a great cast, fails to go deeper into a depiction of the consumption and understanding of information and more specifically, hate.
The author is a writer based in New York.
The post Re-imagined ‘Merchant of Venice’ in New York Fails Horribly Because of Poor Artistic Choices first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd
Magdeburg Christmas market, December 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Christian Mang
i24 News – A suspected terrorist plowed a vehicle into a crowd at a Christmas market in the German city of Magdeburg, west of the capital Berlin, killing at least five and injuring dozens more.
Local police confirmed that the suspect was a Saudi national born in 1974 and acting alone.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed his concern about the incident, saying that “reports from Magdeburg suggest something bad. My thoughts are with the victims and their families.”
Police declined to give casualty numbers, confirming only a large-scale operation at the market, where people had gathered to celebrate in the days leading up to the Christmas holidays.
The post Germany: 5 Killed, Scores Wounded after Saudi Man Plows Car Into Christmas crowd first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister
A person waves a flag adopted by the new Syrian rulers, as people gather during a celebration called by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) near the Umayyad Mosque, after the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, in Damascus, Syria, Photo: December 20, 2024. REUTERS/Ammar Awad/File Photo
Syria’s new rulers have appointed Murhaf Abu Qasra, a leading figure in the insurgency which toppled Bashar al-Assad, as defense minister in the interim government, an official source said on Saturday.
Abu Qasra, who is also known by the nom de guerre Abu Hassan 600, is a senior figure in the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group which led the campaign that ousted Assad this month. He led numerous military operations during Syria’s revolution, the source said.
Syria’s de facto leader Ahmed al-Sharaa discussed “the form of the military institution in the new Syria” during a meeting with armed factions on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
Abu Qasra during the meeting sat next to Sharaa, also known by the nom de guerre Abu Mohammed al-Golani, photos published by SANA showed.
Prime Minister Mohammed al-Bashir said this week that the defense ministry would be restructured using former rebel factions and officers who defected from Assad’s army.
Bashir, who formerly led an HTS-affiliated administration in the northwestern province of Idlib, has said he will lead a three-month transitional government. The new administration has not declared plans for what will happen after that.
Earlier on Saturday, the ruling General Command named Asaad Hassan al-Shibani as foreign minister, SANA said. A source in the new administration told Reuters that this step “comes in response to the aspirations of the Syrian people to establish international relations that bring peace and stability.”
Shibani, a 37-year-old graduate of Damascus University, previously led the political department of the rebels’ Idlib government, the General Command said.
Sharaa’s group was part of al Qaeda until he broke ties in 2016. It had been confined to Idlib for years until going on the offensive in late November, sweeping through the cities of western Syria and into Damascus as the army melted away.
Sharaa has met with a number of international envoys this week. He has said his primary focus is on reconstruction and achieving economic development and that he is not interested in engaging in any new conflicts.
Syrian rebels seized control of Damascus on Dec. 8, forcing Assad to flee after more than 13 years of civil war and ending his family’s decades-long rule.
Washington designated Sharaa a terrorist in 2013, saying al Qaeda in Iraq had tasked him with overthrowing Assad’s rule and establishing Islamic sharia law in Syria. US officials said on Friday that Washington would remove a $10 million bounty on his head.
The war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused one of the biggest refugee crises of modern times and left cities bombed to rubble and the economy hollowed out by global sanctions.
The post Syria’s New Rulers Name HTS Commander as Defense Minister first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.