Saul Rubinek long has wanted to play Shylock, a role that his father, a Yiddish actor and Holocaust survivor, never got a chance to play. But now that he has finally gotten to star in “The Merchant of Venice,” the production is being canceled after today’s performance because of community complaints that it is antisemitic. So, he comes out on stage fully dressed as an Orthodox Jew for the part, but rather than finish what’s supposed to be the final performance, he lets loose to the audience about antisemitism, censorship, the history and the beauty of “The Merchant of Venice,” and his own life as a Jewish actor.

That is the premise and plot of “Playing Shylock,” weaving together fact and fiction. The solo play written by Mark Leiren-Young, which has opened tonight at Polonsky Shakespeare Center after a run in Canada, features some of the actual biography of its star, a familiar face on TV and in the movies who was born in 1948 in a German refugee camp.

But there was no canceled production of “The Merchant of Venice,” and it is unclear to me how much in Rubinek’s 100-minute monologue are his own words, or even his own beliefs. There are some stirring and provocative moments in “Playing Shylock,” especially his performance of Shylock’s “Hath not a Jew” speech in English and then Yiddish.  But the enterprise is undermined by a script that revolves around a straw man argument claiming unfair attacks on “The Merchant of Venice” and is rife with dubious assertions.

Rubinek tells us flat out that Shakespeare didn’t write “The Merchant of Venice” or any of the other plays attributed to him, that the real playwright was Edward DeVere. He says that “Shylock was based on a real Jew. And that the trial is based on a real trial.” He says that “The Merchant of Venice” was performed more frequently “from the 17th century on” than “Hamlet,” “Lear” or “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” but is now rarely performed, having become “radioactive.” He says it’s the only play in New York that’s been canceled because of its content since the government shut down Orson Welles’ production of “The Cradle Will Rock” in the 1930s. He says “you can count the number of Jewish plays in New York on one hand. Maybe one finger.” Most of this is untrue; the rest of it is unproven.

 A play need not be documentary theater, but “Playing Shylock” consists primarily of dispensing information – there is almost no dramatic action – which makes it harder to embrace wholeheartedly when so much of that information is at best unreliable.

That also makes it less than successful as the vehicle it seems to want to be to discuss the urgent dilemma that currently pits two civic goods against one another –  the fights against antisemitism and for the First Amendment. 

Rubinek (or playwright Leiren-Young) does make an intriguing case for Shylock as one of the few great Shakespearean roles open for Jews to portray.  But Rubinek’s father and all great Yiddish actors also clamored to star in “The Merchant of Venice”  in part because the Yiddish translators rewrote the play to turn Shylock from a villain into a hero.  As for the familiar (and less convincing) case that “The Merchant of Venice” is not as antisemitic as it seems: The Elizabethan playwright, so goes the argument, was simply responding to the market, since Christopher Marlowe’s “The Jew of Malta” had been such a hit a few years earlier; “The Merchant of Venice” greatly humanized its own Jewish character — or, as Rubinek puts it, “Marlowe’s Jew makes Shylock look like Seth Rogen.”  

What “Playing Shylock” has most going for it is Saul Rubinek’s life story, and his skill in telling it. His family having settled in Canada, he was hired at age 20 to join the company of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. Having such a job pleased both him and his parents, but Martin Kinch (the director of “Playing Shylock” and obviously a longtime friend) urged him to leave, for an experimental play in Toronto.
“I’m an actor with a full-time job. $225 a week. 1969 money. I’m living the dream. And I’m supposed to leave to do this underground play? I have a career to think about.
‘What career?’ Martin says…’Saul, what great roles do you think they’ll give you here? Romeo? Hal? They’ll give you Lady Macbeth before they let you anywhere near Hamlet. William Shatner barely got leads here because they thought he was too Jewy. And he looks like William Shatner. You look like Shatner’s dentist. Saul, a Jew who looks like a Jew will never get a sniff at Hamlet. You’ll get Guildenstern. And one day, if you’re lucky, you’ll get your Shylock.’”
And so it came to pass, sort of, 56 years after he took Martin’s advice and left.

Playing Shylock
Polonsky Shakespeare Center through December 7
Running time: 100 minutes, no intermission
Tickets: $80 – $200
Written by Mark Leiren-Young
Directed by Martin Kinch
Set & Costume Design by Shawn Kerwin.
Lighting Design by Jason Hand.
Performed by Saul Rubinek