The Merchant of Venice (Lincoln Center Festival) NYC Reviews and Tickets
Show-Score Member Reviews (26)
See it if You like Shakespeare and enjoy examining human relationships
Don't see it if You don't like Shakespeare
See it if You love Shakespeare and, specifically, "The Merchant of Venice." This is a masterful production, brilliantly acted.
Don't see it if You don't like Shakespeare.
See it if I might be a tad biased cause I know some cast members but I thought this production was amazing and very relevant to our political climate
Don't see it if you don't like the play itself and don't like Shakespeare done in time period costume/set/music. J.Pryce and cast were stunning though
See it if You enjoy Shakespeare performed by the world's best company, love the character of Portia, are open to a play that in part reflects its age
Don't see it if You are determined to see the play as biased rather than exploring stereotypes, or you hate Shakespeare
See it if You like Shakespeare problem plays, Jonathan Pryce, updating a classic, outstanding production values.
Don't see it if You don't like nearly 3 hour Shakespeare plays, anti-semitism as a theme, updating of a classic.
See it if you like excellently performed Shakespeare in a mostly traditional staging.
Don't see it if you've seen the play too many times already or if you have no interest in Shakespeare.
See it if M of V presented by a group of actors dedicated to his plays - Shakespeare's Globe; Jonathan Pryce as Shylock;original music and dance
Don't see it if Abuse of Jews in plays upsets you; You cannot follow Elizabethian dialogue and syntax; You think that Shakepeare's plays are dull and boring
See it if u wish a strong prod., a great Shylock & a chance to make sense of this difficult play. It's worth your 3 hours and the cost. Venue is good.
Don't see it if u can't be bothered, only willing to pay for perfection, have no patience, no love of verse. Has 3 brilliant scenes, set is effective, dark.
Critic Reviews (17)
"A brooding, powerful production…Throughout the director Jonathan Munby’s lucid and strongly acted staging, we will remain aware that while this Shakespearean play is classified as a comedy and is poised ambivalently between light and dark, it will generally be the baser aspects of humanity that prevail...Mr. Pryce illuminates Shylock’s anguish so vividly, his face a contorted mask of spiritual suffering, that it all but erases any sense of contrasting light and dark in the play."
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"A stodgy, underwhelming affair. More or less Renaissance Venice in its period costumes and incidental music, Jonathan Munby’s staging is unfussy and direct, but rarely exciting...Pryce speaks his text with that mellifluous, subtly menacing delivery, shifting from complacent self-satisfaction to howling dismay. But his Shylock a generally passive, cerebral performance, all in the voice and very little in the body. Still, what a grand voice. Pryce is one of the last of the classically trained greats."
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"As the much maligned yet ethically questionable Jewish moneylender Shylock, Pryce's multifaceted performance is so nuanced that he dominates Jonathan Munby's mounting...During Pryce's offstage scenes, however, this 'Merchant of Venice' is disappointingly black-and-white. The romantic moments between the lovers never quite gel, with far too many of the performers fading into the background. Only in the climactic trial scene does this production come to life as a whole."
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"Jonathan Munby’s first-rate Shakespeare’s Globe production...Throughout, Munby keeps the disdain for Jews prominent...Pryce plays Shylock as a man of great dignity, despite (because of?) the hatred accorded him...During the parts of the play when the Shylock plot gets a breather and the competition for Portia’s hand and its aftermath takes focus, Munby hews to a more tradition approach every bit as successful as the enhanced Shylock episodes. He has a first-rate cast performing for him."
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"Live sightings of Jonathan Pryce are rare in New York...His complex, blazingly internalized Shylock is a reminder of how much we’ve been missing. Director Munby’s handsome, modest, stylistically jarring production is a mixed treasure. It is obnoxious in its audience-participation clowning, but harrowing in its violent juxtaposition of the merry Venetian gentiles and their unspeakably casual cruelty to the Jews."
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"Pryce’s portrait of Shylock in the dark and powerful production is brilliant and tragic. He invests his character with so much humanity that the distances of time and space vanish...All the performances, under the direction of Jonathan Munby, are excellent, with particularly stellar turns from the three women…A brilliant production, and a performance that will stay with you long after the torches go out."
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"The very best of what a traditional production can be, throwing light on the text but with enough new touches to preserve against boredom…Pryce’s Shylock rescued the role from being a 'comment' on race, and returned it to the story of a battered, angry and increasingly mad old man, pushed to savagery by the savagery around him…In this production he was rendered as a complexly as I’ve seen…The effect of the play was as of a punch to the gut."
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"Though the production might appear at the outset to be conventional, don’t be misled. Mike Britton’s richly brocaded costumes may be period-sumptuous, but this ever-problematic play forsakes sartorial pageantry to land with a telling sting in its tail. Suffice it to say that Mr. Munby and his largely expert company understand the difficulty in classifying as comic a play that is so dominated by the vilification of the Jewish moneylender Shylock."
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