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Tag: Shylock

A Shylock written for Rubinek 

A Shylock written for Rubinek 

Saul Rubinek in Mark Leiren-Young’s Playing Shylock, which is playing in Toronto. Leiren-Young wrote the work with Rubinek in mind. (photo by Dahlia Katz)

Victoria playwright Mark Leiren-Young spent October in Toronto, where his Playing Shylock is appearing at Berkeley Street Theatre through Nov. 24. The one-man show, which stars Saul Rubinek, is based on the Jewish character in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.

“I’ve been attending rehearsals, run-throughs and previews as a playwright,” Leiren-Young told the Independent from Toronto before the play’s world premiere. “That means I’m around to work on the script with the actor and director. Since it’s a new script, that means I’m adjusting it to reflect ideas that come up in rehearsals, working with the costumes, the designs and the space. Really, anything that needs doing to get the script as tight and right for the actor and the production as it can be – making sure ideas are clear, jokes land and that Saul is having as much fun as possible.”

photo - Mark Leiren-Young
Mark Leiren-Young (photo by Jeffrey Bosdet)

Leiren-Young’s play Shylock first appeared on stage at Bard on the Beach in 1996. Playing Shylock, he said, is an all-new play with the same core premise: a production of The Merchant of Venice has been canceled in mid-run due to a controversy over the production.

“This is a bespoke piece that started during the COVID lockdown and I built it around Saul’s life experiences after studying his voice, his personal history, his greatest roles, his mannerisms,” Leiren-Young said. “This was written to sound like Saul and feel like Saul and not like a character or story created by me.”

In fact, when actor John Huston, who starred in multiple productions of Shylock, touring five provinces, asked Leiren-Young what was recognizable from that first play, the playwright responded, “The lines that Shakespeare wrote.”

“Beyond keeping some of Shylock’s best lines from Merchant of Venice, this is an all-new play because we’re in an all-new world,” said Leiren-Young. “And it’s a new world in so many ways. Think about how controversies played out before social media. Think about how the issues in theatre and society have changed, and the issues the Jewish community is facing.”

According to Leiren-Young, the original draft of Playing Shylock was completed a couple of years ago. Yet, he tries to update his plays to reflect current circumstances.

“This script always included a cancelation letter inspired by an actual cancelation announcement,” said Leiren-Young. “The original draft for Playing Shylock was inspired by a letter announcing the cancelation of a screening of the controversial opera The Death of Klinghoffer about a decade ago.”

The letter now, he said, is largely inspired by the decision of the Belfry Theatre in Victoria to cancel its January production of The Runner after protesters demonstrated and vandalized its property because they objected to a play about an Israeli volunteer with the Orthodox group ZAKA.

“Not just because it’s more current, it’s Canadian and more relevant to the times,” he said, “but because that letter appeared to be used as the template for canceling another play at a theatre across the street from the Belfry.”

Rubinek, a distinguished stage veteran, is widely known to film and television audiences. To name but a few of his credits: Wall Street, Barney’s Version, Frasier. This past June, the Globe and Mail placed Rubinek in the 25th spot on its list of the greatest Canadian actors of all time.

“I believe that if the people who made that list see this show, they’ll want to bump up his ranking by a fair bit. Watching Saul deliver Shakespeare’s lines is amazing. Watching Saul deliver my lines is a dream,” Leiren-Young said. “He’s 76 and he’s better on lines than any other actor I have ever worked with.”

Of the play, Rubinek said Leiren-Young “leaps into the historic controversy about the character of Shylock with gleeful relish and biting humour and then has the chutzpah to create a poignant study of why theatre should matter.”

The actor added, “To collaborate with on a new play – and I’ve done a lot of them – Mark is an actor’s dream: tirelessly inventive, generous, creatively stubborn in all the right places and, best of all, funny.”

This weekend, on Nov. 10, 2 p.m., at Victoria’s Congregation Emanu-El, Leiren-Young will give a talk about Playing Shylock, his original play Shylock, the character of Shylock, the impact and history of The Merchant of Venice and “anything else the audience that day wants to talk about.”

The author of numerous books, Leiren-Young is the only writer to win the Leacock Medal for Humour (Never Shoot a Stampede Queen) and the Science Writers and Communicators Award for Canada’s best science book (The Killer Whale Who Changed the World).

Leiren-Young’s Sharks Forever is a non-fiction book for middle-school readers and features an introduction by environmental activist Paul Watson. His next book, Octopus Oceans, is being released in early 2025. He is currently working on a new book for young readers focusing on how to protect the oceans and the animals who live there.

To follow Leiren-Young online, visit his website, leiren-young.com, and his Substack page, substack.com/@skaanapod?. 

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Format ImagePosted on November 8, 2024November 7, 2024Author Sam MargolisCategories Performing ArtsTags antisemitism, Mark Leiren-Young, Playing Shylock, playwrighting, Saul Rubinek, Shakespeare, Shylock, theatre
Welcome back, TUTS!

Welcome back, TUTS!

Much of the humour in Something Rotten! comes from Nostradamus (Jyla Robinson), right, leading Nick (Kamyar Pazandeh) astray with incorrect visions of the future. (photo by Emily Cooper)

Theatre Under the Stars is a fun, relaxing way to ease yourself back into theatre after the COVID hiatus. Its two productions, Something Rotten! and We Will Rock You, are happy fare that alternate nights through Aug. 27, outdoors at Stanley Park’s Malkin Bowl.

The Independent saw Something Rotten! on opening night, hoping to see Jewish community member Daniel Cardoso, who plays Jewish moneylender Shylock in the TUTS productions. However, it was understudy Simon Abraham who took on the role of the moneylender that night. He and the entire cast put on a great show.

In this comedy, set in 1595, Shakespeare is monopolizing the theatre industry and playwright siblings Nick and Nigel Bottom are trying to write a hit. They face several challenges, including being in debt to Shylock, who is willing to forgive that debt if they permit him to produce their new production. However, they initially refuse because he and they could be put to death, as Jews at the time were permitted few professions, one of which was moneylender.

Something Rotten! takes on – in very light manner – antisemitism, the treatment of the poor and the place of women in Shakespeare’s time. It also takes on these issues as they are depicted in Shakespeare’s plays and poetry.

“Shylock has been a very interesting character to explore and I extremely grateful to our director, Rachel Peake, for giving me the chance to do so,” Cardoso told the Independent in an interview before the show opened. “In researching for this part, I certainly took a cursory look at Merchant of Venice, but only so I could have an idea of who Shakespeare’s Shylock is. Because of how much Something Rotten! subverts the audience’s expectations of these well-known Shakespearean characters, there are only a few similarities between what I’m doing and what we see in Merchant of Venice. I don’t think that antisemitism is a central theme of this show, but we certainly get a view of it through Shylock.

“I also dove into what antisemitism looked like during the time of the Renaissance,” he continued, noting that Jews were “expelled from England in the late 13th century and only officially allowed to return in the mid-17th. However, it does appear that there were indeed Jewish people living in England during Shakespeare’s time and that some even fled to England from Spain and Portugal, due to the Inquisition.”

Cardoso sees parallels between Shakespeare’s time and today’s undocumented immigrants in both Canada and the United States and the refugee crises around the world. “In trying to find a way into the Shylock ofSomething Rotten!,” he said, “I found myself drawing on these modern-day examples, as well as trying to imagine what it must have been like for Jewish people in the time of the Renaissance or various other points in history. I found that, given my own connection to the community, this hit quite close to home for me. At the end of the day, he’s a smart guy who works hard and, despite the obstacles in front of him, he is able to be an equal and a friend to many of the characters in the show.”

Not such a smart guy is Nick Bottom (Kamyar Pazandeh) who, in trying to skip the hard work and best Shakespeare (Daniel Curalli), seeks out a soothsayer, Nostradamus (Jyla Robinson), who tells him that musicals are the popular theatre of the future. Nick sinks the last pennies he and his wife Bea (Katie-Rose Connors) have into a musical production with a reluctant Nigel (Vicente Sandoval), who has Shakespeare’s talent but lives in his brother’s shadow. It is only after Nigel meets Portia (Cassandra Consiglio), the daughter of Puritans, that he becomes to his own self true.

The homage to and satire of both musicals and Shakespeare makes for a lot of laughs and reference guessing – is that line or musical snippet from Annie, Evita, Rent, A Chorus Line, or more than a dozen other shows? Standout songs are “God, I Hate Shakespeare,” with the Bottom brothers’ differing views of their main competitor; “The Black Death,” a cheery ditty about the plague, the Bottoms’ first musical attempt; “Will Power,” Shakespeare enjoying his rockstar status, amid fawning, crying, screaming, fainting fans; and “Make an Omelette,” the title song of the Bottoms’ new musical. Foreseeing Omelette instead of Hamlet as Shakespeare’s best-ever play is only one of the soothsayer’s many slightly incorrect visions.

“It’s been a privilege to get to work on Something Rotten!” said Cardoso, who has been in four other TUTS productions. “It’s an extremely funny show and, if you’re a fan of either musical theatre or Shakespeare, then you’ll have a fun time at this show. And, if you like both, even better!”

For tickets to either of this season’s productions, visit tuts.ca.

Format ImagePosted on July 22, 2022July 20, 2022Author Cynthia RamsayCategories Performing ArtsTags antisemitism, comedy, Daniel Cardoso, history, satire, Shakespeare, Shylock, Theatre Under the Stars, TUTS
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