Merchant man

Andrei Serban's not shy about Shylock

by Scott T. Cummings

You'd think Shakespeare had titled the play "The Moneylender of Venice." Although he appears in only five scenes, the character of Shylock has dominated the performance and discussion of The Merchant of Venice for the past 200 years. Why? Because Shylock is a Jew in an anti-Semitic world, and because Shakespeare has made him an object of ridicule and scorn who nevertheless is a candidate for compassion.

For director Andrei Serban, this makes The Merchant of Venice, along with The Taming of the Shrew and Othello, one of Shakespeare's three "problem plays." Although scholars might reserve that designation for Troilus and Cressida or All's Well That Ends Well, Serban looks at this trio as a director and sees in each a central character -- a Jew, a woman, and a black -- whose depiction does not square with contemporary social values. The "problem" is how to render these plays on their own terms without offending prevailing sensibilities. This is a challenge that Serban savors, as his rock-'em sock-'em production of The Taming of the Shrew made clear to all who saw it at the American Repertory Theatre last season.

Serban is back at the ART for round two: his take on The Merchant of Venice begins previews tonight and runs in repertory through January 22. I spoke with him about Shylock and the rest of the play as he was preparing to lead the ART company into the final week of rehearsal.

Shylock functions as the villain of a comedy. He's a curmudgeonly father who keeps his daughter and his ducats locked up tight. He's a Christian-hating Jew who lends money for profit and demands a pound of flesh as collateral. But Shakespeare could not keep from giving Shylock enough humanity to make matters complicated. And the absolute evil of the Holocaust has made his portrayal all the more problematic. Some productions set out to transform Shylock into a heroic martyr to his faith; most feel the need to depict him with at least enough dignity to provide a rearguard defense against charges of racism. Serban claims to have taken a different approach. "I didn't start with a need to defend Shylock or to find an apology for Shakespeare being anti-Semitic," he says. "I started out thinking, `I'm going to see what is in the play.' "

What Serban found is a character who hides behind the stereotype others have of him and manipulates it for his own ends. "Not for a moment does Shylock let anybody know what is going on inside him," says Serban. "That is his technique for living in the world of the gentiles: he plays the image of what they want him to look like. In doing that, we have discovered he can be very funny, almost like a vaudevillean, especially because Will Lebow is a very subtle comic actor. I don't think there has ever been a Shylock like his. People might love it or hate it, but he is not imitating Laurence Olivier or anybody else, that's for sure. His performance is going to be completely original."

Serban points out that Shylock and the mean and mercantile world of Venice are only half the story; there's also the fairy-tale world of Belmont and the rich, young heiress Portia, who's bound by her dead father's wish that her husband be decided by a trial involving chests of gold, silver, and lead. "I think of Portia almost as the spirit of the play," Serban explains. "I feel like her father is Prospero's cousin or something. She is there to help everybody see the value of the more generous, compassionate side which is missing in Shylock because he must cover his feeling side in order to defend himself from society. But do the Christians see the value of mercy? They treat him with unbelievable cruelty."

The contrasting worlds of Venice and Belmont will be differentiated by the scenery designed by Christine Jones and by music composed for the production by Elizabeth Swados. Serban and Swados have worked together as far back as the early 1970s and their much acclaimed Fragments of a Greek Trilogy. The past year has marked a revival of their collaboration: in addition to Merchant, Swados has provided music for Serban's The Caucasian Chalk Circle, which was seen in the spring at LaMama with students from the Columbia University acting program (which he heads), and for his Cymbeline, which was produced this summer in Central Park.

Serban describes Swados as "the perfect collaborator because she doesn't fall in love or cling to anything. She will change, cut, or re-create anything in the spur of the moment." That spirit of flexibility will no doubt be called upon as Serban heads into technical rehearsals and preview performances, a period in the process so crucial that he compares it to the editing of a film. "Structure and composition are very important to me at this stage. Up to this point, I don't think about the audience, but now I have to think about what impression I want to give. And that's a matter of editing, of eliminating or changing until I find something that feels right. What that is exactly I don't yet know. On opening night I will find out once and for all, which is unfortunate because I won't be able to change it anymore."