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by William Shakespeare, directed by Julia Nish-Lapidus

Shakespeare BASH’d, The Theatre Centre, 1115 Queen Street West, Toronto

February 13-23, 2025

Shylock: “Signior Antonio, many a time and oft

In the Rialto you have rated me

About my moneys and my usances.

Still have I borne it with a patient shrug

(For suff’rance is the badge of all our tribe). (Act 1, Scene 3)

The current Shakespeare BASH’d production of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is the most insightful production of the play I’ve ever seen. Merchant is often too readily dismissed or condemned as an “antisemitic” play. The recent production of Playing Shylock starring Saul Rubinek directly addressed that question and concluded that the play does feature many characters who make antisemitic statements but that the play itself is not antisemitic. Quite the reverse. Rubinek states that Shylock, the first fully-rounded Jewish character in European literature, is one of the most coveted roles in Yiddish theatre which could hardly be true were the play itself antisemitic.

Director Julia Nish-Lapidus and her predominantly Jewish cast have looked deeply into the text and have discovered that they share Rubinek’s point of view. As a result, the play takes on a far different character than any previous production you might have seen. The flaw in the direction of other productions is the attempt to force the play to be a conventional comedy. As in many comedies by Shakespeare the play concludes with the pairing up of three couples – here Portia and Bassanio, Lorenzo and Jessica, Gratiano and Nerissa. Ordinarily, the pairing up of couples in comedy is the sign of the creation of a new society that will overturn the oppressive rules of the older society against which it rebelled.

What makes Merchant so markedly unlike Shakespeare’s other romantic comedies is that the ending gives every sign that the new world of the three couples will simply continue the negative ways of the old society. Merchant may have the outward form of a conventional comedy but Shakespeare has intentionally undermined it so that the “happy ending” we might expect is instead bitter and ironic rather than “happy”.

In so playing with the audience’s expectations, Merchant (c. 1596) looks forward to Shakespeare’s other so-called “problem plays” like All’s Well That Ends Well (c. 1598), Troilus and Cressida (c. 1602) and Measure for Measure (1604). All four of these plays are marked by an inescapably ambiguous tone. In All’s Well, Helena performs miracles to win a young man who is clearly unworthy of her. In Troilus, Troilus and Cressida swear eternal love only for Cressida prove false with Troilus’s enemy. In Measure, the Duke forces Isabella, who only desire is to be a nun, to marry him.

So, in Merchant, all of the “good” characters are shown to share a despicable world view. The two speeches that everyone will remember from Merchant are Shylock’s great speech “If you prick us, do we not bleed?”, asking why human beings cannot regard all other people as fellow human beings. The other is Portia’s speech in court disguised as a lawyer where she states, “The quality of mercy is not strained”. Yet, as Nish-Lapidus has seen so clearly and as her cast brings out so well, the Christians throughout the play malign Shylock as inhuman – a devil, a dog, a cur – and show no sign of mercy. Shylock’s view that we are all human is taken up by no one else in the play.

In watching the Shakespeare BASH’d production, I kept hearing lines that I had never heard before in the half dozen or so previous productions I’ve seen. That is because Nish-Lapidus has not cut the lines in Shakespeare that make the supposedly “good” look bad. What is so surprising is how early Shakespeare begins to taint the Christian Venetians with their non-inclusive world view. Directors often see Portia as yet another in the line girls who dress as boys that includes Rosalind, Viola and Imogen. Yet, Portia is quite unlike these other three because she is riddled with prejudice. After the Prince of Morocco fails the Casket Test that her late father has devised to choose her husband, Portia says, “Let all of his complexion choose me so”, revealing her as overtly racist. I don’t recall ever hearing this line before.

In the trial scene Nish-Lapidus makes very clear that it is Portia’s whim, not Shylock’s intransigence, that leads Shylock to his horrid punishment. It’s true that Shylock insists on the letter of his bond and rejects payment of even triple the amount owed him, but when Portia (disguised as a lawyer) says the bond may allow Shylock to take a pound of Antonio’s flesh but none of his blood, Shylock relents. Bassanio is ready to pay Shylock, but Portia prevents the payment, she insisting now that Shylock “shall merely have justice and his bond”.

By insisting on this Portia does not simply prevent Shylock from being repaid but claims he is subject to a law in Venice that “If it be proved against an alien / That by direct or indirect attempts / He seek the life of any citizen”, his goods are confiscated, half going to the intended victim and half to the state. First, we see that even though Shylock has long been resident in Venice, he is still considered and “alien”. Second, we see that Portia, who so eloquently spoke about mercy “that blesseth him that gives and him that takes”, apparently has forgotten all about it and seeks only revenge against Shylock. It is Portia who asks Antonio, “What mercy can you render him, Antonio?” to which Antonio utters the outrageous demand that Shylock turn Christian. It is as if Portia is mocking her own speech about mercy.

Hallie Seline has easily accommodated herself to this new, unflattering view of Portia. Seline extends the anger Portia expresses against her father’s forbidding her to choose a husband to mocking of her previous suitors and then to the two we meet on stage. Seline’s behaviour as Portia suggests that the deep resentment against her father had led to a resentment against men in general, made worse by Portia’s inherent racism and bigotry. (In fact, one wonders whether Portia’s father has imposed the Casket Test on Portia as a way of teaching her, too, that “all that glisters is not gold”.)

Seline so hardens her voice and demeanour in the trial scene that we feel as if Portia is simply using the law to humiliate a man old enough to be her father. Portraying Portia thus makes her begging her ring from Bassanio appear an unnecessary test of his faithfulness. Throughout her performance Seline well presents a contradiction in Portia that Shakespeare surely intended. Seline shows us a young woman who speaks so beautifully and moves with grace but who inside is consumed with rage against her powerlessness against men. Playing the prosecuting lawyer in Shylock’s trial allows Portia to exercise power for the first time as does demanding the ring from Bassanio. In contrast to the warmth that Portia is usually shown to exude, Seline plays her as icy from the start. Seline makes Portia’s welcome of Antionio to her house, knowing of his love for Bassanio, particularly cool.

For his part, Cameron Laurie plays Bassanio not as the dashing young hero but as a shallow and mercenary young man. Bassanio may later agree with the motto “All that glisters is not gold”, yet he thinks he needs to dress the part of a gentleman into order to contend with Portia’s other suitors. And then, as Laurie’s emphasis makes clear, Bassanio, a spendthrift, is interested in Portia because of her wealth. It is greatly to Laurie’s credit that we sympathize with Bassanio’s quest for Portia even though we know what motivates him initially is not love.

Jesse Nerenberg is excellent as Antonio. Nerenberg has such a well-modulated voice and speaks Shakespeare so clearly that he wins us over with his eloquence. But Shakespeare frequently has Antonio refer to Shylock in the vilest terms and Nerenberg lends these remarks such vehemence that we wonder how a seemingly rational man can also be so prejudiced. The hatred Nerenberg uncovers in Antonio’s demand that Shylock convert is shocking. Many critics have pointed out that the love Antonio’s feels for Bassanio is more than friendship. Nerenberg speaks Antonio’s lines declaring his love, especially during the trial scene when Antonio thinks he will die, with greater fervour but still in a guarded manner as if all too aware it is unrequited.

Alon Nashman gives a tremendous performance as Shylock. His is the most natural, most human, least histrionic performance of this great role I have seen. Rubinek praises Shylock as the first fully-rounded Jewish character in European literature and Nashman presents the figure in all his complexity. Indeed, Shylock, though he appears in only five scenes in the play, displays a wider range of emotion than any of the other characters. The remarks of Nashman’s Shylock to Antonio drip with irony that someone who commonly kicks and insults him in the street should now come to him to borrow money. Nashman’s makes us feels Shylock is justly angered that his daughter should not just elope with a Christian but should also steal from him and not steal just his money but take items like the ring he gave his late wife that were most precious to him. Nashman’s absolute silence before he accepts the court’s horrendous verdict along with the way he makes his body seem collapse into itself when he hears it is absolutely devastating. It is truly a privilege to see him play this role.

Nish-Lapidus’s close reading of the text leads her to find that the relationship between Lorenzo and Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, is not the romantic affair other productions have shown. Nish-Lapidus includes an entire scene from the play I have never seen performed before. Ori Black has shown Lorenzo to be a smooth talker and Cameron Scott has shown Jessica to be a meek young woman who yearns for freedom. In Act 5, Scene 1, Lorenzo and Jessica comment on the night in a repeating sequence of comparisons each beginning “In such a night”. The night they say is one such as Troilus saw, or Thisbe or Dido or Medea. The passage ends with them naming themselves. As Jessica says, “In such a night / Did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well, / Stealing her soul with many vows of faith, And ne’er a true one”. Some in the audience will know that the loves of none of the four ancient characters mentioned ended well. For Lorenzo and Jessica to compare themselves to these figures of tragedy suggests they already regret their marriage.

In a brilliant move Nish-Lapidus has Shylock’s cap that fell from his head when he bowed in accepting the court’s decree remain on the ground throughout the rest of the play, including in this scene between Lorenzo and Jessica, to keep Shylock’s fate present in our minds even when he is absent. When Lorenzo receives the news that he has been awarded half of Shylock’s possessions, he exults. Nish-Lapidus, however, has Jessica read the decree stunned and remain standing, tears streaming down her face, after everyone else leaves to celebrate. There could be no stronger image than this of the cruelty that Shylock and Jessica suffer.

Were I writing earlier in the run, I would urge all readers to see the play as soon as possible, but, in fact, the run was nearly sold out before it opened. With no set, few props and costumes from the actors’ wardrobes, Shakespeare BASH’d has done what far too many Shakespeare productions never do. It has made us see a famous play in an entirely new light. I certainly will not be able to think of The Merchant of Venice again without considering the insights that Nish-Lapidus and her cast have brought out in the text. This production is so important in uncovering the true complexity of the play that I can only hope Shakespeare BASH’d has occasion to revive it with, one hopes, Nashman again as Shylock.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Alon Nashman as Shylock; Jesse Nerenberg as Antonio; Cameron Laurie as Bassanio and Hallie Seline as Portia; Hallie Seline as Portia, Cameron Scott as Jessica and Alon Nashman as Shylock. © 2025 Kyle Purcell.

For tickets visit: www.shakespearebashd.com.