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yamamanamaI know what you’re thinking, The Merchant of Venice in this political climate? Never going to happen.
But it’s because of the current political climate that the Actors Shakespeare Project staged it.
After all, we live in a stupid fucking world where Texas school administrators are saying that books on the Holocaust should be balanced with opposing views, whatever those are.
On my way there, I encountered unexpected busing from JFK UMass to Broadway yet again and then when I arrived at Downtown Crossing, I had just missed a train. But hey, at least I got to pet a Pomeranian. There was a man who told jokes, including one lifted from Jurassic Park (what do you call a nearsighted dinosaur? Doyouthinkhesaurus). There was a woman with purple streaks in her hair with a silver symbol pendant around her neck that may have been a Magen David, and her friend had green hair and a pendant that may or may not have been Arabic. I would have known but idiots like Joe Rogan and L. Jagi Lamplighter are determined to keep the pandemic going. A man on another train car had a bright yellow shirt and what looked like the Lambeth diamonds. The fake ones, of course, as the real ones were used to finance the Black Hand.
They were wearing masks so I’m pretty sure they were vaccinated. But still.
Summer weather lingered on. The rain held off until midnight and the day after felt more like autumn but still nice.
Next to me was a man reading the script in Russian. Given how much improvisation the comedies have, I doubt it would help.
Antonio, wearing a tacky ruby-red sequin blazer and Santa hat with HOHOHO emblazoned on it, introduced us to the actors and characters and even provided a few cues for the audience to cheer and boo and stamp their feet. He assured us that, while this is now considered a problem play in more than one way, they will do it as a comedy, complete with a happy ending and Michael Jackson medley. He held crude puppets of Gratiano, Salerio, and Solanio, the Greek Chorus.
There were applause signs that I think are part of the theater and the set looked like a vaudeville variety show host set on Redworld, a book I don’t have but some asshole does.
He compared the whole thing to a game of professional wrestling at Madison Square Garden in the 1980s. Everyone knows it's all an act but the audience stil needs to make noise.
Bassanio wants to marry Portia but he squandered his estate and needs 3000 ducats. Antonio, his friend, the titular Merchant of Venice (no, Shylock is a moneylender), asks Shylock for money. Antonio has pissed Shylock off and berated him many times and this time, Shylock asks for a pound of flesh. Shylock wears a fur coat and a Venetian mask with a hooked nose, and pulls out things like sticks of dynamite and beakers of green poison from his bag and speaks like Boris from Rugrats while a jaunty mopey klezmer tune plays in the background in the presence of others, and whenever he does something diabolical, stagehands make thunder sounds and hold up lightning bolts and Bassiano opens up an umbrella, but talks with his normal voice when alone and occasionally refers to himself not as Shylock but as Nael, the actor playing him, and adds lines from The Jew of Malta, another play from that era that may or may not be using antisemitic tropes to address antisemitism. The cast snuck around wearing Batman masks and red capes and singing the Mission: Impossible theme. Jessica played with a Superman action figure. The scene that was cut involved Portia and the Moroccan king, and I’m not sure it was cut for time or to give more comedic impact to the Prince of Morocco’s appearance, played by Nerissa wearing a camel rider costume with buck teeth. He took the gold casket (a laundry bin), which contains something men desire. Cue loser horn. Nerissa consoled Portia by nuzzling her with the camera’s face. Launcelot had a corpse-white face and wore a blood-spattered white clown suit with an Elizabethian ruff and I wonder if he was based on Pennywise, and wore a black Napoleon hat and played a keyboard in some scenes. During one of Shylock’s speeches, he prances around as the anti-semitic caricature to audience silence.
Jessica takes with her some turquoise jewelry. It takes the stereotype and subverts it because Shylock doesn’t care about monetary value. The jewelry is a memento of his dead wife Leah.
Launcelot crawled around on all fours saying he was a pretty kitty. They added a balcony scene, quoted Romeo and Juliet, getting the lines wrong. Bassiano picks the correct (lead) casket and out pops Portia and some balloons. There was bad poetry. Oh yeah, Nerissa and Gratiano are a couple too. In the trial scene, the Duke is played by a giant paper mâché head and Shylock dons a transparent rain poncho a la American Psycho. He’s not at all swayed by Portia’s offer of ducats. “I’ll tear the shit out of thee!” “Begone from this world, wench!” “Meet thy doom, o wretched man!” “Pisseth off!”. Act 5 was excised completely. Instead, we get Shylock/Nael in a glass box, disappearing into the darkness as a fell mist spills forth, to the sound of a Hebrew lament (I think, anyway).
The real villain here is antisemitism.
There was a corgi on the train, barking his head off. The train car was post-apocalypse themed, as it was the Orange Line.
A woman with mesopelagic blue hair got off at Chinatown.
I met a woman with a tattoo of a coral snake without the yellow. Her hair was the color of bismuth.
On October 12, I had a dream about someone I met at a Jazz Fest and woke up with my sense of time feeling more fucked up than usual and slightly more resentment over the life the anti-vax movement has stolen from us. The sense of time diffraction will fade, while the resentment is probably going to remain with me.
burning question: Who is that dog beneath me? How has he obtained the Imperial Crown of Corginia? Rrr-rowf!
But it’s because of the current political climate that the Actors Shakespeare Project staged it.
After all, we live in a stupid fucking world where Texas school administrators are saying that books on the Holocaust should be balanced with opposing views, whatever those are.
On my way there, I encountered unexpected busing from JFK UMass to Broadway yet again and then when I arrived at Downtown Crossing, I had just missed a train. But hey, at least I got to pet a Pomeranian. There was a man who told jokes, including one lifted from Jurassic Park (what do you call a nearsighted dinosaur? Doyouthinkhesaurus). There was a woman with purple streaks in her hair with a silver symbol pendant around her neck that may have been a Magen David, and her friend had green hair and a pendant that may or may not have been Arabic. I would have known but idiots like Joe Rogan and L. Jagi Lamplighter are determined to keep the pandemic going. A man on another train car had a bright yellow shirt and what looked like the Lambeth diamonds. The fake ones, of course, as the real ones were used to finance the Black Hand.
They were wearing masks so I’m pretty sure they were vaccinated. But still.
Summer weather lingered on. The rain held off until midnight and the day after felt more like autumn but still nice.
Next to me was a man reading the script in Russian. Given how much improvisation the comedies have, I doubt it would help.
Antonio, wearing a tacky ruby-red sequin blazer and Santa hat with HOHOHO emblazoned on it, introduced us to the actors and characters and even provided a few cues for the audience to cheer and boo and stamp their feet. He assured us that, while this is now considered a problem play in more than one way, they will do it as a comedy, complete with a happy ending and Michael Jackson medley. He held crude puppets of Gratiano, Salerio, and Solanio, the Greek Chorus.
There were applause signs that I think are part of the theater and the set looked like a vaudeville variety show host set on Redworld, a book I don’t have but some asshole does.
He compared the whole thing to a game of professional wrestling at Madison Square Garden in the 1980s. Everyone knows it's all an act but the audience stil needs to make noise.
Bassanio wants to marry Portia but he squandered his estate and needs 3000 ducats. Antonio, his friend, the titular Merchant of Venice (no, Shylock is a moneylender), asks Shylock for money. Antonio has pissed Shylock off and berated him many times and this time, Shylock asks for a pound of flesh. Shylock wears a fur coat and a Venetian mask with a hooked nose, and pulls out things like sticks of dynamite and beakers of green poison from his bag and speaks like Boris from Rugrats while a jaunty mopey klezmer tune plays in the background in the presence of others, and whenever he does something diabolical, stagehands make thunder sounds and hold up lightning bolts and Bassiano opens up an umbrella, but talks with his normal voice when alone and occasionally refers to himself not as Shylock but as Nael, the actor playing him, and adds lines from The Jew of Malta, another play from that era that may or may not be using antisemitic tropes to address antisemitism. The cast snuck around wearing Batman masks and red capes and singing the Mission: Impossible theme. Jessica played with a Superman action figure. The scene that was cut involved Portia and the Moroccan king, and I’m not sure it was cut for time or to give more comedic impact to the Prince of Morocco’s appearance, played by Nerissa wearing a camel rider costume with buck teeth. He took the gold casket (a laundry bin), which contains something men desire. Cue loser horn. Nerissa consoled Portia by nuzzling her with the camera’s face. Launcelot had a corpse-white face and wore a blood-spattered white clown suit with an Elizabethian ruff and I wonder if he was based on Pennywise, and wore a black Napoleon hat and played a keyboard in some scenes. During one of Shylock’s speeches, he prances around as the anti-semitic caricature to audience silence.
Jessica takes with her some turquoise jewelry. It takes the stereotype and subverts it because Shylock doesn’t care about monetary value. The jewelry is a memento of his dead wife Leah.
Launcelot crawled around on all fours saying he was a pretty kitty. They added a balcony scene, quoted Romeo and Juliet, getting the lines wrong. Bassiano picks the correct (lead) casket and out pops Portia and some balloons. There was bad poetry. Oh yeah, Nerissa and Gratiano are a couple too. In the trial scene, the Duke is played by a giant paper mâché head and Shylock dons a transparent rain poncho a la American Psycho. He’s not at all swayed by Portia’s offer of ducats. “I’ll tear the shit out of thee!” “Begone from this world, wench!” “Meet thy doom, o wretched man!” “Pisseth off!”. Act 5 was excised completely. Instead, we get Shylock/Nael in a glass box, disappearing into the darkness as a fell mist spills forth, to the sound of a Hebrew lament (I think, anyway).
The real villain here is antisemitism.
There was a corgi on the train, barking his head off. The train car was post-apocalypse themed, as it was the Orange Line.
A woman with mesopelagic blue hair got off at Chinatown.
I met a woman with a tattoo of a coral snake without the yellow. Her hair was the color of bismuth.
On October 12, I had a dream about someone I met at a Jazz Fest and woke up with my sense of time feeling more fucked up than usual and slightly more resentment over the life the anti-vax movement has stolen from us. The sense of time diffraction will fade, while the resentment is probably going to remain with me.
burning question: Who is that dog beneath me? How has he obtained the Imperial Crown of Corginia? Rrr-rowf!
