A play now being staged in Orange County offers Jewish Americans a sometimes uncomfortable front-row seat to re-examine William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.”
The production of “District Merchants” at South Coast Repertory — which its playwright, Aaron Posner, calls “an uneasy comedy” — adds a dialogue on Black-Jewish relations in America, sprinkles in Yiddishisms, lights up a scene with Havdalah and includes an Irish character “with a head full of gefilte fish” who converts to Judaism.
At center stage, of course, is Shylock the moneylender, who Shakespeare repeatedly refers to as “a kind of devil,” “the devil himself” and a “dog Jew” who insists on a pound of flesh as payment for an unpaid debt.
Shakespeare’s characterization of Shylock has long been seen as an anti-Semitic stereotype, often stirring heated debate about the appropriateness of the play’s production. Even the Anti-Defamation League has gotten involved, preparing a discussion guide for educators intended “to guide an exploration of the problematic issue of anti-Semitism as part of the broader discussion of the play.”
However, “The Merchant of Venice” also has intrigued Jewish audiences, with a Yiddish production mounted in England in 1946. This year, a touring production by Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London offered a reimagined, more humanized Shylock.
In “District Merchants,” Shylock is presented as a “simultaneously sympathetic and monstrous character, who has haunted us ever since,” said Posner in a phone interview.
To wrestle with those issues in his recasting of the Bard’s tale, Posner has transplanted the story in place and time. Noting that some of the Venetian characters in the original play were slaveholders, Posner moved the story to post-Civil War Washington, D.C., in 1870. Shylock again is in the money-lending business, but now the play’s infamous contract is fleshed out between him and a Black merchant, Antoine. Tipping us to their uneasy relationship, Shylock calls Antoine a “shvartze,” and Antoine names Shylock a “Yid.”
While Jews and African-Americans “have occasionally been allies,” Posner said, they “have had a very contentious, complex, very difficult relationship.” He referred to a book in which an American Jew and an African-American have a similar, critical conversation: “Jews & Blacks: A Dialogue on Race, Religion, and Culture in America,” by Michael Lerner and Cornel West.
“District Merchants” isn’t Posner’s first experience with an adaptation. He has written an adaptation of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” (with Teller of Penn and Teller), as well as a remix of Chekhov’s “The Seagull,” titled “Stupid F—— Bird.” He also has written theatrical adaptations of Chaim Potok’s novels “The Chosen” and “My Name Is Asher Lev.”
Posner said he didn’t remember when he first encountered “The Merchant of Venice,” but “was aware of Shylock before I read it just because it’s so much a part of the culture.”
Asked about how “District Merchants” developed, Posner responded that when you are Jewish and a director of Shakespeare, “somebody is going to ask you to direct ‘The Merchant of Venice’ at some point.” However, he refused to attempt an adaptation until he could figure out how to tell its complex story of “self-servingness, duplicity and anti-Semitism” in a way “that was worthwhile.”
The Yiddish in “District Merchants,” although used for comic effect, is not anachronistic, given that one of the language’s earliest modern writers, known as Mendele Moykher Sforim, was being published regularly at the time “District Merchants” is set.
Will the audience need a Yiddish-English dictionary?
“It’s pretty self-explanatory,” said Posner, who grew up with a Yiddish-speaking grandmother. “My grandmother was fluent. She and her sister would at least speak phrases around the house. When I was growing up, the use of Yiddish for exclamations, for sayings, for commentary was something I enjoyed. … You put into plays the textures of your life.”
For those wondering what language from the original play remains in Posner’s take, Shylock still delivers his “hath not a Jew eyes” speech, in which he argues how he is like other men. Annotating that speech, Posner allows us to see that behind those eyes is a lifetime of persecution and suffering for being a Jew. “Someone should pay for my pain,” Shylock says, explaining his demand that his potentially bloody contract with Antoine be paid in full.
“I believe that Shylock has experienced radical damage” from a life of anti-Semitism, Posner said, and as a result, his actions are a “very human response to radical injustice.”
When he started working on the play more than two years ago, Posner had no idea that the day’s news would mirror the racial tensions in America today.
“I wish the environment wasn’t so toxic,” he said. “It’s just horrible to watch my play become more and more timely every single day.
“What we’re seeing on the streets of the country right now is other people’s pain. They want to take revenge. They want payback. They want someone else to hurt.”
Although his play may resonate with audiences in different ways than he originally hoped, Posner said he is trying to reach audiences in much the same way Shakespeare did.
“The whole play is line-walking. This has been my goal: to not make anything simple,” Posner said. “I’m trying to do the same thing that Shakespeare was doing. He took histories, other people’s plays and stories, and then, using them as a structure, talked about concerns with his own life and his own times, his own country.”
Now, with events of the day on his mind, Posner is “deeply interested” in the audience’s response.
“I hope the value of this play is not only the watching,” he said, “but the conversation that provokes afterward.”
“District Merchants” runs through Oct. 23 at South Coast Repertory’s Julianne Argyros Stage in Costa Mesa.
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