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New York City • There are those disclosures made in the interest of balance. Then there are those disclosures made in the interest of context. This one's made in the interest of both.
Here it is: Faced with a deadline and forces of the secondary market for live-theater performances, I paid $400 for one ticket to The Public Theater's production of "The Merchant of Venice" at Broadway's Broadhurst Theatre.
The show, thanks to the draw of Al Pacino, has become the hottest ticket in the New York theater world. And in a play where the almighty ducat pulls virtually all the characters' strings, and where the central scene requires the ultimate credit-default swap of "a pound of flesh," such a hefty price can't go unmentioned.
Was the production worth seeing? The short answer is yes.
But this being one of William Shakespeare's most vexing works, no short answer will do. With Al Pacino offering line readings like a thoroughbred, the show was, of course, fantastic.
Yet the play's surface anti-Semitism is also profoundly disturbing, raising the specter of masochism on the part of anyone who pays more than face value for a ticket. Let's just say I gave my pound of flesh, but not one drop of blood.
Those who watched Pacino declare his awe for Shakespeare in the 1996 film "Looking for Richard," which documents his journey through "Richard III," know all about the actor's commitment to the Bard. It made perfect sense, then, that he committed himself to one of Shakespeare's most controversial characters in the 2005 film production of director Michael Radford's "The Merchant of Venice."
Cast in time-worn Jewish stereotypes, Shylock, the reviled and merciless money-grubber, is also a sympathetic victim forced into baptism after holding a devastating mirror to Christian hypocrisy.
Shylock is one of the ultimate tests in acting, a maze of tone, emphasis and gesture that need nuance to thread through charges of the character's racism.
As you might expect, not once did Pacino play for hell-bent fury, but instead let his lines breathe through all their moral complexity. Daniel Sullivan's direction and the scenic design of Mark Wendland, with its accents of dark and light to match Shakespeare's text, add immeasurably to the production.
In contrast to Radford's fidelity to 16th-century Venice, this "Merchant" plants its costumes and set design firmly in the 19th-century. The foreboding semicircular steel-iron set and hanging abacus suggest a setting between the ruthless dealings of the financial world and — dare one suggest it — a grim future of concentration-camp gates.
With Venetian Jews making deals with Gentiles through the bars into the Gentile world, Sullivan foregrounds the play's anti-Semitism. That's no small point, given the blood libel at the center of the plot. Shakespeare may be the greatest dramatist and poet of the English language, but Sullivan seems to realize that even great art must acknowledge the crimes of racism and the scars of history that have followed since Elizabethan England. Sullivan and Wendland give us a contemporary vision of the play that makes the injustices of anti-Semitism clear through set design and tone, without altering Shakespeare's words.
And as Shakespearean scholars have pointed out, when Shylock swears by his "holy Sabbath" to have his bond, it's all part and parcel of his Jewish nature. The hypocrisy of the Christians is merely a matter of personal responsibility. Attempts at allegory are best left alone.
The thundering injustice of Shylock's dispossession and Christian baptism is perfectly expressed in this production, with a baptismal pool that appears to be steaming with rage, while the outsized shadows of the court's "magnificoes" loom in the background.
Pacino aside, theater critics also lauded Lily Rabe's portrayal of Portia when the play opened in October, and hers is a fine performance. And it's long been true that the best strategy for enjoying this play rests in separating the comedic love plot of the three caskets and Bassanio's wooing of Portia from the ugliness of the trial scene. Smart theatergoers can mine the riches of contrasting and comparing the two.
The true marvel, then, is the way Sullivan's cast coaxes all the play's elements of love, commerce and revenge to mesh together in one cloth. Byron Jennings' Antonio is rendered smooth enough to make you forget he's a bigot without a clue to his own depression, making subtle points in the process. David Harbour's Bassanio longs for Portia with all the conviction of your best friend's romantic travails. It's tempting to think that, even without Pacino, this production would still soar into the stratosphere.
After all the hurt, ugliness and hypocrisy of this troubling play has subsided, the balm of another art is introduced through the words of Jessica's suitor, Lorenzo. He tells us life's treasures are no longer measured in money and contracts, but in something beyond the bond of words: "Their savage eyes turn'd to a modest gaze/By the sweet power of music."
It's then you realize how Sullivan's exquisite path through the bent lines of "Merchant" — along with exquisite performances by Pacino and Rabe — make this play worth the cost.
'The Merchant of Venice' with Al Pacino
P The production continues through Jan. 9.
Where • Public Theatre at the Broadhurst Theatre, 235 West 44th Street, New York City
Info • $154-$314. Call 877-686-5366 or 212-239-6200 for more information, or visit http://www.shubertorganization.com/theatres/broadhurst.asp or http://www.telecharge.com