Joe Miter's

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Chicago's 'Merchant' and 'Angels'
Are Given Mixed Reviews

to the Masonic Temple Theatre

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erchant of Venice in
Chicago's Goodman
Theatre ends its run
Nov. 5. If you've missed
it, there's nothing lost.
The show's a disaster. The
highly touted director, Peter Sel-
lars, sets the play in Venice,
Calif., during the race riots fol-
lowing the Rodney King trial.
Sellars writes:
"By inviting African-American
actors to take the roles of the
Jews, Asian actors to play Portia
and her court, and Latino actors
to play the Venetians, I can be-
gin to touch the tex-
ture of life in
contemporary Amer-
ica; the metaphor
and the reality of
anti-Semitism is ex-
tended to include
parallel struggles
and their related is-
sues."
Sellars' program
notes are imbued
with passion. The
production has none.
Shylock is reputed to
be bloodthirsty, but
it is Sellars who evis-
cerates the play.
Casting a black
actor as Shylock is
not original with Sel-
lars. The first black
Shylock appeared in

schoolchildren. Strategically
placed video cameras, sometimes
hand-held, record the faces of ac-
tors often eclipsed by shadow or
by staging that gives us their
backs, so that we can see their
faces only on the TV monitors
that dot the house.
Distractions are everywhere.
Varied images bombard us si-
multaneously from the overhead
monitors, and the annoyance is
compounded by the constant
drone of sounds piped in: water
dripping, surf lapping, car horns
blaring, motorcycles revving up.

1

Above, Paul Butler as
Shylock.

CATERING AVAILABLE In Schools, Homes, Etc.

Left, Robert Sella and
Carolyn Swift in
"Angels."

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stroika, run in rolling repertory
at the Royal George Theatre.
Though each part runs a hefty
four hours, the wit, theatricality,
and sheer energy of the piece is
impressive.
Tony Kushner is gay and Jew-
ish, and his play is an exploration
of what it means to be gay and
Jewish in America today. His
play's troubled protagonist, Louis
Ironson, is a guilt-ridden, New
York-Jewish intellectual, gay,
facile and funny, and obsessed
with the politics of the Reagan
years. His liberal polemics echo

1807. Neither is it original to Sometimes it's hard to distin-
dwell on the play as an analysis guish between deliberately placed
of economics as the root of racism. background noise and the sound
Heinrich Heine first suggested of audience members snoring.
Tony Kushner's Pulitzer and
that element of the play in 1837.
What is original is the manner Tony award winning Angels In
in which Sellars mangles the America fares better.
Under the direction of Michael
play. Actors stand and declaim
into microphones in baleful mo- Mayer, the play's two parts, Mil-
notones, like dull but dutiful lennium Approaches and Pere-

the fervor of his
grandparents' social-
ism.
A Jewish Hamlet,
Lou thinks too much.
(Playful echoes of
Shakespeare resound
throughout.) When
he considers the self-
destructive power of
democracy's freedoms
gone amuck, when he
makes connections
between the plague of
AIDS and the decline
of a society corroded by the self-
ethic of the latter half of this cen-
tury, the play shows flashes of
brilliance. But when Lou's self-
flagellating ruminations become
an end in themselves, the play
gets stuck in an adolescent sen-
sibility. No wonder America's in
decline, limping toward the third
millennium.