Tag: Tony Cisek

There’s no question that Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice is a problem play, fraught with old hates that were once considered justified and old beliefs that have long lost their hold on the European mind.

There is also no question that the Folger’s presentation of Aaron Posner’s reinvention of the play, under the title of District Merchants, addresses the play’s issues with humor, slangy lingo, current references, and a good heaping of contemporary sensibility.

Born in a society that still viewed “usury” as a sin (for the Elizabethan, “usury” meant the charging of any interest on loans at all), The Merchant of Venice‘s core disturbance could not be more remote to modern audiences. In fact, in today’s world even the 400% interest charged for payday loans is considered A-okay by most political elites.

In the Inferno, however, Dante reserved the seventh circle of hell (that’s only two away from Satan himself) for those who do violence against art (or the creations of the artisan, i.e., that which is created through their skilled labor). Making money off the labor of others through the charging of interest was only one such way. In other words, from the Elizabethan perspective, making money off of money is considered a crime against God.

By contrast, in modern America, making money from money has become our way of life; not only is it the fastest growing sector of the US economy, but the artisan is fast becoming a quaint relic of an archaic past, or possibly the hip painter, poet, or theatre artist who sells their “wares” to an expanding American upper class.

Yet, The Merchant of Venice rests firmly on a belief that considers such a practice sinful and, on the parallel assertion (or denial of fact), that Christians might have anything to do with that particular sin.

Hence, Shakespeare summons the anti-Semitic stereotype of Shylock, the Jewish money lender.

Given our society’s continuing struggle against anti-Semitic sentiments, modern producers focus more on this bigoted byproduct of the play than on its usurious core.

Aaron Posner is no exception.

In District Merchants Shakespeare’s 20-plus character play has been reduced to 8 principles, three sets of young lovers and two old men.

In Posner’s postmodern reinvention of the play, each character exists more as a time-hopping receptacle of sensibility than as a specific character within a place and time-bound plot. He or she is afforded the opportunity to stand before the audience and explain his or her perspective on life, on race and religion, on the meaning of existence through a “modern” lens.

This move on Posner’s part elevates the character’s subjectivity and, in some sense, makes the play more about these eight “aggregated beings” who happen to be involved in a somewhat connected story about love and a pound of flesh.

The old men are, of course, Shylock and Antoine, played respectively by Matthew Boston and Craig Wallace.

Set in a post Civil War Washington, DC, Reconstruction is underway: America is being rebuilt after a bloody war, and Antoine (an African American) represents a rising new order with his opportunity to make it big by brokering loans to free and newly freed blacks.

Shylock, however, holds the purse strings, doling out money as he sees fit and as the market will bear; and recently, Shylock has been rejecting clients that Antoine has sent him and, thus, denied Antoine the financial commissions his brokering would earn.

One such client is the ultra-light-skinned “mulatto” Benjamin Bassanio (played by Seth Rue), who needs money not to start a business or build a home, but to “pass”  and woo a rich (and white) northeastern lady, Portia (played by Maren Bush), with whom he is smitten. If he can succeed, his fortune will be secured.

Lorenzo (the white lover) is another fortune seeking young man (played by William Vaughan). He woos Jessica, Shylock’s daughter (played by Dani Stoller). Like Benjamin, Lorenzo’s motivation is also clouded by financial reward. If she will steal her father’s money and jewels, he too will have a successful life. The fact that he says he is willing to marry her anyway does not detract from those less than honorable desires.

Both Portia and Jessica are strong, seemingly independent young women. Portia dresses as a man and attends Harvard Law, whereas Jessica is devotedly religious and would never consider abandoning her Jewish faith, as the Jessica in Merchant of Venice does.

Even so, both of these young women fall victim to their fortune-seeking suitors, with Jessica even stealing her father’s money before she leaves with Lorenzo.

Of course, in the end, “love” conquers the suitors’ misogynistic, greedy selves, transforming them into decent young men and, thus, truly desirable husbands.

The other strong, determined young woman is Portia’s servant, Nessa (played by Celeste Jones). Her love interest is Shylock’s talkative servant, Lancelot (played by Akeem Davis). And the hope here is also that “love” will transform Lancelot into the desirable man that Nessa imagines him to be.

These three love stories dominate the production’s focus, overshadowing the troubles at the dark center of the story, the usurious Shylock and his rival Antoine, the carpetbagger.

By focusing on the love stories and on the transformation of the male psyche within the context of “love”, the play’s comic elements come to the fore. The malevolent core still resonates at times, but more as a potential dilemma than as an actual reality.

Posner’s art is his ability to present to audiences old stories lived through his own contemporary sensibility.

In this case, District Merchants becomes the odd fusion of Shakespeare, Reconstruction, and Aaron Posner himself. Where one begins and the another ends or begins or another begins or ends is not to be discerned.

In this postmodern mixture you have to take things as they come at you. You might laugh one moment and sit in disgust the next. Most importantly, however, you should not remember what you laughed at or what left you shaking your head in disgust because the last thing you want to experience is the shame of laughing or being disgusted during politically incorrect moments. Who knows whose sensibilities you might offend?

Running Time: 2 hours and 30 minutes, including an intermission.

District Merchants plays through July 3, 2016 at the Folger Theatre – 201 East Capitol Street SE, in Washington, DC. For tickets, call the box office at (202) 544-7077, or purchase them online.

District Merchants, in its world premiere at Folger Theatre, is a tour de force that explores the complexity of race and identity in Reconstruction-era America. As part of Folger Theatre’s 2016 celebration of 400 years of Shakespeare and in tandem with its exhibition America’s Shakespeare, Folger commissioned this very fine reimagining of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice by Aaron Posner.

Posner should be no stranger to DC-area theater lovers: besides being a long-time DC director and the author of more than a dozen plays, his excellent Stupid F—ing Bird (an adaptation of Chekhov’s The Seagull) debuted at Woolly Mammoth in 2013 and was such a blow-out success that it returned in 2014. Indeed, Stupid F—ing Bird was one of the top ten plays produced in the entire United States last year.

Theater J debuted his Life Sucks (or The Present Ridiculous), an adaptation of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya, in 2015, another affecting production that explored the delicate balance of life constantly teetering between ridiculous hilarity and despondency.

Well, Mr. Posner, you’ve done it again. This time, you’ve taken on the master, the big Mr. S., and you’ve nailed it. District Merchants explodes with layers of complexity and this production, directed by Michael John Garcés, a company member at Woolly Mammoth and Artistic Director of LA’s Cornerstone Theater, is not to be missed.

The play primarily takes place in post-Civil War Washington, DC, where people grapple with a world of transition and reconciling the sins of slavery with America’s future. Shylock is a Jewish moneylender and overprotective father of Jessica, a young woman who yearns to escape from her father’s gaze, and employer of Lancelot (Akeem Davis), a recently freed slave who wonders why he continues to work for a harsh master. Antoine, a Black businessman, is a father figure to Benjamin Bassanio (Seth Rue), who in turn loves the beautiful and ambitious Portia (Maren Bush) and is best friends with Lorenzo (William Vaughan). Portia employs Nessa (Celeste Jones), an intelligent foil to Portia’s professed progressivism.

The action focuses on the struggles for Black Americans – both those that had been slaves and those that had not – during this era as well as Jewish Americans and the discrimination and marginalization that both experience. Posner has faced the most problematic aspect of Shakespeare’s play here full-on: he turns the question of anti-Semitism on its head, layering in the difficult relationships between two groups historically treated as “Other” in America.

Many people regard The Merchant of Venice as Shakespeare’s most distressing play, as its apparent anti-Semitism can never seem to be adequately justified. Is Shylock a sympathetic character, one whose actions we can comprehend or with whose pain we can emphathize? Critics of Shakespeare tend to think the answer to this question is that we cannot; that the original words of Shakespeare exploit negative Jewish stereotypes in a way that is meant to offer comic resolution, not sympathy. However, this Shylock, in a fantastic performance by Matthew Boston, is beleaguered and full of pain. He is mistreated again and again; he is abandoned by his daughter Jessica (Dani Stoller); he feels like a man who has at the end of his rope, who has no choice but to act out against Antoine (Craig Wallace) just to be able to exert some power in his life.

And this is a theme throughout the play: the exercise of power or, rather, the painful lack of power that so many individuals have simply because of their skin color or gender. In a world where doors are shut for women, Blacks, and Jews, we see various characters “passing” for what they are not. Every person struggles, in his or her own way, against both society’s limitations and the limitations of their own character and will to effect change.

The set, designed by Tony Cisek, purposely evokes a city that is being rebuilt: the pillars are half-finished, exposing a construction scene behind it. The pillars conjure Rome, a reminder of the greatness of the American Experiment, the intention that America would itself be a great nation, a new society of promise. However, the evocation of Rome introduces an interesting element to the backdrop of the city in transition: is America in the process of being rebuilt or will it, like Rome, fall of its own corruptions? Is this a city in rebirth or decline? The answer may not yet be answered.

It is worth noting that the music is created by Christylez Bacon, another homegrown District virtuoso. Bacon – who performs throughout the area, often collaborating with international musicians in innovative and unique performances – is a Grammy Award-nominated progressive hip-hop artist and multi-instrumentalist, not least of which is wizardry with spoons and his own beatbox.

The entire cast is very fine: every character is played with remarkable depth and energy. There are several astonishing moments in the production: in one scene, Bush exhibits an extraordinary range of facial expression, flushing through a dozen complex emotions in an extended silent and awkward scene. Boston’s monologue – the famous “Do we not bleed?” speech by Shylock – is remarkably powerful and uncomfortable, partly due to an unnerving direct interaction with the audience (at this production, it happened to be with Ari Roth, of Mosaic Theater Company of DC) that exposes the raw anguish at being part of a group that is treated as Other by society.

It is no stretch to read currents of present-day conflicts, of Ferguson, of Baltimore, of rising xenophobia in this country against many groups, in this play. This play is not merely a tale of marginalization and struggles after the Civil War: while America may bear the long shadow of slavery, it bears still many wounds that continue to be inflicted, day after day. We cannot heal while we are still in the act of harming, and hurting.

District Merchants plays through July 3, 2016 at the Folger Theatre – 201 East Capitol Street SE, in Washington, DC. For tickets, call the box office at (202) 544-7077, or purchase them online.

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