Theatre in Review: Playing Shylock (Polonsky Shakespeare Center) Playing Shylock is a rare (maybe the first) example of theatrical autofiction, a genre that comes with built-in issues: The great character actor Saul Rubinek is out to settle numerous scores -- involving political correctness, antisemitism, Shakespearean authorship, and his own career prospects, especially his chances of ever starring in The Merchant of Venice -- and he does so using an unusual -- sometimes engaging, sometimes grating -- blend of fact and fiction. Often, the latter undermines the former. Playing Shylock has been written by the Canadian playwright Mark Leiren-Young, but Rubinek plays himself, and much of the script is drawn from the facts of his life, beginning with his birth in a refugee camp in Germany after World War II. (His parents survived the Nazis, having been sheltered by a Polish farmwife and her grudging husband.) Itchy, argumentative, and prone to wisecracks, the actor has plenty to get off his chest, and some of it very much needs to be said. For example: Thrilled to land a gig at Ontario's Stratford Festival as a young actor, he is brought up short by his longtime friend Martin Kinch (director of Playing Shylock), who coolly informs him, "William Shatner barely got leads here because they thought he was too Jewy. And he looks like William Shatner. You look like Shatner's dentist." For those who recoil at The Merchant of Venice's depiction of a Jew, Rubinek only notes that, in contrast, Christopher Marlowe's The Jew of Malta makes Shylock "look like Seth Rogen." Told of concern in "the international Jewish community" about The Merchant, he cracks, "International Jewish community...Yeah, we meet bi-monthly. That's when we Elders of Zion...plot our protocols." Clearly, Rubinek and Leiren-Young are spoiling for a fight, but they have a funny way of going about it. The conceit of Playing Shylock is that we are at a production of The Merchant of Venice, and the second half is about to begin. Instead, Rubinek barges onstage, announcing that he will not complete the performance because of a news leak revealing that, as of tomorrow, the production has been canceled by its presenter due to pushback from protestors and online trolls. ("I could defend this 'explosive, 'offensive, 'Anti-Semitic,' 'neoliberal,' 'colonialist,' 'Zionist-apologist' production," he says, adding wryly. "Not that I read any of the comments.") The official statement -- "This has not been an easy decision, and we are grateful to our community for sharing various perspectives, which added to our understanding" -- is a scathingly exact example of the mealy-mouthed Esperanto that arts organizations often resort to in their desperation to offend no one on planet Earth. In truth, however, Rubinek has never appeared in a canceled production of The Merchant. Indeed, nobody has offered him the role. Speaking to an academic who considers the play "toxic," he says, "I always wanted to play Shylock, and I never had the chance. I tell her, 'Do you know how rarely Merchant of Venice is produced today?'" Well, we had it last season at Classic Stage Company. Theatre for a New Audience produced a revival in 2022 on the very stage where Playing Shylock is being performed; the same production was also seen in Washington, DC. (TFANA previously staged it in 2007 with F. Murray Abraham). Shakespeare's Globe offered it, in separate productions, in 2022 and 2016. Others include Portland Shakespeare Project (2025), California Shakespeare Festival (2016), Royal Shakespeare Company (2015), The Old Globe (2013), Stratford Festival (2013), and on Broadway (2010). There is even, God help us, a musical version floating around, staged last year in Seattle. If this constitutes being canceled, I hate to think what popularity looks like. Rubinek also tends to argue his case from both sides of his mouth, noting that political correctness regarding actors' ethnicity leads to teapot tempests about, say, the casting of Irish American Rachel Brosnahan as a young Jewish matron in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. "I'm glad my queer friends are no longer afraid to play queer roles," he adds. "But how close are we to a world where that's all they'll get to play?" (Such questions aren't likely to keep Jonathan Bailey or Andrew Scott up at night.) At the same time, he argues that, as a Jew, his family's history shaped by the Holocaust, he has a unique right to the role. And there's something a little sour, even cheap, about his crack, "Nobody blinks that my Jewish daughter is being played by Carly Wong." I wonder what he would have made of John Douglas Thompson's superb Shylock at TFANA in 2022. Playing Sherlock is also weighed down by a lengthy digression in which Rubinek insists that Shakespeare's plays, including The Merchant, were written by Edward de Vere, the Earl of Oxford. He supplies plenty of circumstantial evidence -- de Vere's education, Shakespeare's lack of same, de Vere's sometime residence in Venice -- but this is a long-discredited theory from what the critic Isaac Butler has termed the "Shakespeare Truther" community. (Among its problems, de Vere died twelve years ahead of Shakespeare after a long period of ill health, so how to explain the dozen or so works that appeared after his burial?) Whatever the merits of this case, it only distracts from the show's thesis and pads out its running time, threatening to turn Playing Shylock into a harangue. There is plenty to say about cowardice and cancel culture in the theatre. But Rubinek has invented a fake problem to address a real one, which makes him look ulterior when he notes that, at seventy-seven, his job prospects are thinning out: "I just know this is what I'm here for. To act. To tell stories. But now...I'm too male, too white, too old, too Jewish?" At moments like this, the actor seems to confuse a changing world with a conspiratorial one. Kinch's production benefits from Shawn Kerwin's scenic design, which suggests a high-concept Merchant staging, featuring a cross hovering overhead and an upstage wall covered with antisemitic graffiti. The designer also dresses Rubinek appropriately for his interpretation of Shylock as an Orthodox Jew. Jason Hand's lighting is notable for subtle shifts that guide the audience in and out of scenes from The Merchant. And, based on his handling of passages from The Merchant, somebody ought to cast Rubinek as Shylock at the first opportunity. (He includes a section of the play in Yiddish, which, if anything, adds to its power.) The script is filled with engaging things, including Rubinek's meditations on his father, a Yiddish theatre actor who lost his career after the war; the shocking revelation that his parents urged him, early on, to get a nose job; and his tart observation, "We're Schrodinger's minority. Non-Jews see whatever fits their slice of stereotype. Saints, sinners, Shylocks. You're all too sneaky about your religion. You're all too proud of your religion." Like many of his points, that one is hard to argue with. Indeed, much of Playing Shylock's considerable entertainment value comes from fighting back in one's mind against Rubinek's broad assertions, especially his occasional tendency to make larger social trends all about himself. But even at ninety-five minutes or so, he goes on too long, and one grows weary from the lack of nuance, his obvious sense that he is right and everyone else is wrong. Still, he has a point: Where is the Merchant revival tailor-made for him? Anyone? --David Barbour 
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