STAGE REVIEW : Hoffman’s the Draw, but the Play’s the Thing

They come to see Dustin Hoffman, but at intermission they’re talking about William Shakespeare. “What a good story!” somebody said.

That is not the usual reaction to “The Merchant of Venice” in performance--but then Peter Hall’s Broadway staging has a sanity and a poise missing from most productions. As a result, a problem play comes into its own as a romantic entertainment.

The problem with “The Merchant,” especially for modern audiences, is Shylock. Although he appears in only five scenes, he oppresses the story like a bad conscience. How can we smile at a fairy-tale comedy whose “villain” is, to our eyes, a victim of the rankest anti-Semitism?

Hall doesn’t soften the cruelty of the Shylock scenes. Indeed, he intensifies it. The Christian merchant Antonio (Leigh Lawson) doesn’t merely inform the Jewish money lender Shylock (Hoffman) that he is quite ready to spit in his face. He does so. And Hoffman’s Shylock must wipe his brow and pretend--or pretend to pretend--that this is a little joke that the two men have between them.

Later we see Shylock physically manhandled when his case against Antonio is thrown out of court. Because Hoffman’s Shylock has so little harm in him--apart from the harm implanted by his Christian adversaries--these moments have force.

And yet the final scene of the play is all moonlight and charm. Portia’s adventure in the courtroom is over, the lovers are reunited (with the men having learned a little lesson) and Antonio, the lonely merchant, will not be left out in the cold. Portia (Geraldine James) and Bassanio (Nathaniel Parker) turn at the door of her mansion and signal to him: Come in.

A lovely image. Do we reflect that this is the same Antonio earlier seen spitting in the face of a harmless Jew? Only in retrospect. For the moment, Hall gives Shakespeare the scene he seems to want, and leaves it to the viewer to sort out the contradictions in the play.

Or are they contradictions in human nature? What the final scene said to me was that the same person--Portia, say--can be exquisitely sensitive to the unspoken needs of a friend while being totally oblivious to the humanity of a person--Shylock, say--who is perceived as a member of a lower caste. That’s far more telling than playing Portia and her circle as spoiled aristocrats who don’t care a pin for anybody.

It also lends interest to those scenes in the play in which Shylock doesn’t appear, which is to say most of them. This “Merchant of Venice” has many stories to tell, among them the tale of a restless heiress who finally finds employment for her intelligence in the lower courts, even if she does have to pretend to be a man. James’ Portia grows more and more likable--to herself, as well--as she takes her life into her own hands: a sort of reverse Hedda Gabler. If Parker’s Bassanio doesn’t strike us as much of a prize, perhaps she will make something of him.

It is harder to say what’s up with Lawson’s Antonio, but the opening scenes make it clear that he, too, feels himself in a kind of cage, perhaps relating to his feelings for the very same Bassanio. Like everyone in the company, actor Lawson makes his lines come from a real place, without habitually stopping to take his character’s emotional temperature, as bad American Shakespearean actors do. The text drives the play, like film speeding through a movie projector.

How does Dustin Hoffman adapt to this style of acting? Like an athlete. Vocally, he is in tune with the rest of the company: not a question of accent, but of voice placement, phrasing and, above all, confidence. He’s got the words and the music now, as may not have been the case when he played Shylock for Hall in London last summer.

It is also a fully rounded characterization. Hoffman’s Shylock is a little man who knows his own worth and who knows exactly how much he is prepared to take from these Christians. There are meaningful pauses toward the end of the “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech, where Shylock reminds his listeners that, pushed far enough, a man will take a man’s revenge. The proposition is exactly the one that Malcolm X used to make toward whites (“If you want to know what I’ll do, think what you’d do”) and Hoffman reads it in a quiet, measured voice that brings utter stillness to the auditorium.

This is a man to be reckoned with. On the whole, though, Hoffman’s Shylock wants to get along. Rather than a Venetian magnifico, he suggests a small businessman with plenty of practice in chatting up a customer. This is partly a pose, but not entirely--there’s some native whimsy here.

He has learned to listen, as members of an endangered minority must. And he has learned to shut off. When the abuse gets too strong, we see him draw into himself: I am not going to let this touch me.

There’s little of the mythic Shylock in Hoffman’s portrayal, but few actors have had a firmer grasp on what it must feel like to be Shylock, particularly after his fall. “You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live” isn’t self-pity. It is the simple truth. And where is “mercy” now that the Christians are in charge?

Impossible to believe that Shakespeare didn’t feel compassion here. Yet his duty--and Hall’s--is to the fairy story, and it whirls back in like music, with only a little uneasiness about the future of Shylock’s runaway daughter, Jessica (Francesca Buller), whose marriage to Lorenzo (Richard Garnett) seems not to have taken. Their teasing is a little too real.

Chris Dyer’s set is a Venetian square that can turn into a lady’s chamber in one light cue. Nothing encumbers the flow of the play, yet each scene finds its own pace and its own specific gravity, including the droll business when Portia’s exotic and hopeless suitors come to call. This “Merchant of Venice” isn’t the editorial that another director--perhaps Hall himself in his younger days--would have made it. And it is certainly not a star vehicle. But what a good story!

At the 46th Street Theatre, 226 West 46th St., New York. Plays Mondays-Fridays at 8 p.m., with Wednesday and Saturday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets $35-$55. (212) 246-0102.

‘THE MERCHANT OF VENICE’

Shakespeare’s play, at the 46th Street Theatre, New York. Director Peter Hall. Presented by Duncan C. Weldon and Jerome Minskoff, in association with Punch Productions. Designer Chris Dyer. Lighting Neal Peter Jampolis. Original lighting Mark Henderson. Costumes supervised by Barbara Forbes. Associate director Giles Block. Casting consultants Johnson-Liff and Zerman. Production stage manager Thomas A. Kelly. Music Robert Lockhart. Sound design Paul Arditti. Executive production Thelma Holt. With Leigh Lawson, Nathaniel Parker, Richard Garnett, Michael Siberry, Donald Burton, Gordon Gould, Ben Browder, Dustin Hoffman, Francesca Buller, Leon Lisseck, Peter-Hugo Daly, Leon Leyden, Geraldine James, Julia Swift, Neal Ben-Ari, John Wojda, Herb Downer, Michael Carter, Basil Henson, William Beckwith, Margery Daley, Dale Dickey, Elizabeth Engan, Denis Holmes, Wilbur Pauley, Margaret Poyner, Gary Rayppy, John Norman Thomas, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Taylor Young.