Thursday, November 28th
Como'spresents
L-jittniAj tityk
mayheifilotatoov, esweetimiteztoev, ovettiolety,
Naiad cwarifieivy Natice:; pany,hatAie,
Welsh actor/playwright shines in his own theatrical
variations on a Shakespearean theme.
Entertainment Writer
ewish theater-goers are about
as fond of William
Shakespeare's play The
Merchant of Venice as Jewish
music-lovers are of the operas of
Richard Wagner.
However, it would be a shame if
distaste for what many con-
sider to be Shakespeare's
only anti-Semitic play were
to keep audiences away from
Gareth Armstrong's one-man show
Shylock, playing through Nov. 24 in
the Aaron DeRoy Theatre in the
Jewish Community Center in West
Bloomfield.
The first production of the Jewish
Ensemble Theatre's Guest Artist
Series, this dramatic riff on the
themes of prejudice, persecution and
life on the wicked stage is wickedly
entertaining. And Armstrong is likely
the most talented classical actor to
appear in metro Detroit in several
seasons.
The Welsh actor, a veteran of the
Royal Shakespeare Company in
Stratford-upon-Avon, was driven to
investigate the origins of the
Merchant and its Jewish villain when
he was chosen for the role of Shylock
at England's Salisbury Playhouse.
He found the outlines of the plot
in a 14th-century Italian fairy-tale, Il
Pecorone (The Simpleton). In addition
to lifting the outline of his plot,
Shakespeare lifted his stock comic
villain — the avaricious Jew — from
centuries of popular drama.
To turn his research into a unified
theater piece, Armstrong chose as his
mouthpiece a minor but crucial char-
acter in Shakespeare's Merchant —
Shylock's friend, "a wealthy Hebrew"
named Tubal.
"OK, it's not a very big part. In
fact, it's only one scene. Well, half a
scene really — he comes in half way
through someone else's scene," Tubal
confides to the audience.
"Eight lines. That's Tubal's contri-
bution. ... One scene — but it's a
great scene."
In the tradition of Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead, playwright
Tom Stoppard's variations on
Shakespeare's Hamlet, Shylock's main
character steps outside the frame-
work of the play and back inside at
will.
One moment, Tubal is a one-man
Greek chorus, retelling Merchant's
plot as the working-out of Shylock's
inevitable fate. Then, suddenly, he is
an actor portraying Shylock; then he
is Shylock; then he becomes a mod-
ern historian, listing the
atrocities perpetrated on the
Jews in the name of
Christianity.
Wigs, books and other small props
extracted from a steamer truck are
the only visual aids in this virtuoso
performance, which Armstrong has
taken around the world since its
1999 debut.
The viewer does not need an inti-
mate knowledge of Shakespeare's play
to understand what's going on. And
when the narrative becomes its most
bleak, Tubal makes a rapid-fire change
to the self-deprecating comic, with
more than a tinge of Jewish humor.
Armstrong also tackles the absur-
dist question of what happens to a
fictional character when the curtain
goes down.
Although there's no pretense that
the action on the stage is anything
but a theatrical fabrication, the view-
er reacts to the Jewish moneylender
as if he were a suffering human
being, not just a stock character.
That, Armstrong points out, is the
genius of Shakespeare.
But, to take the raw material of
what is arguably Shakespeare's most
problematic play, to pare it down to
its origins and rebuild it in minimal-
ist fashion — and still leave the audi-
ence aching for a happy ending for
Shylock, after the curtain goes down
— that's the genius of Armstrong. CI
Shylock, written and performed
by Gareth Armstrong, runs 7:30
p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays,
8 p.m. Saturdays and 2 p.m.
Sundays through Nov. 24 at the
Aaron DeRoy Theatre in the
Jewish Community Center in
West Bloomfield. $20-$30 with
senior and student discounts.
(248) 788-2900.
Off/mei-
6/74,961)epAeAson Mehtales' ttiMcy, c yPaty,
Who Weeps For Shylock?
DIANA LIEBERMAN
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