REVIEW: In Playing Shylock, Saul Rubinek asks: ‘Am I Jewish enough yet?’

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/By Ilana Lucas / Nov 4, 2024

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“Am I Jewish enough yet?”

This year, Victoria’s Belfry Theatre cancelled a production of Christopher Morris’ 2019 Dora-winning The Runner. A monologue delivered by an Orthodox Jewish Israeli who decides to treat a young Arab woman before an IDF soldier, the play begged the audience to note the shared humanity of all parties. Written by a Canadian, it was shut down after protests accused it of centring Israeli voices, making the theatre space “unsafe” for community members.

Given these recent events, the stinging relevance of Playing Shylock, which opened on October 30 at Canadian Stage’s Berkeley Street Theatre (in association with Starvox Entertainment), may feel too close for comfort. Playwright Mark Leiren-Young here revamps his popular mid-1990s work Shylock, in which a production of The Merchant of Venice is cancelled mid-run amidst accusations of antisemitism. In this version, the lead role is no longer Jon Davies, a fictional Jewish actor who chooses to play Shylock as the villain he says Elizabethan England intended him to be, but star Saul Rubinek himself.

Leiren-Young adapts the play to fit our contemporary, hashtag-savvy world, where calls for a local cancellation can appear from any corner of the globe. Also explored are issues of identity politics in art — who is allowed to write what stories? Who may play what parts? — that feel immediately relevant. He incorporates Rubinek’s personal story, as “Saul” the actor stops the show in its second act after hearing that tonight will be its last performance.

Shawn Kerwin’s set and costume design scream “modernized Shakespeare,” presenting a Merchant set in a world on fire. The crumbling bricks of a church-cum-courtroom reveal a graffitied backdrop, spray-painted with the word JEW. Above a long, imposing table hangs the outline of an enormous, partially burnt cross crafted from wood, occasionally illuminated in gloomy and rich tones of blue (lighting by Steven Hawkins).

“Am I Jewish enough yet?” Rubinek begs, wearing, then stripping off the payos (side curls), tallis and yarmulke that turn him into Shylock. The son of Holocaust survivors who was born in a German Displaced Persons camp before immigrating to Canada with his family, he examines his father’s aspirations to act in the Yiddish theatre, where Shakespeare was often performed in translation — with an adjustment to make Shylock the hero.

Playing Shylock feels like it could not take place anywhere but the here and now, informed as it is by Rubinek and director Martin Kinch’s history with the nascent Canadian Stage, when it was called Toronto Free Theatre. Rubinek’s monologue implies that the theatre’s name change is fitting, as it is less free in both ticket prices and ability to program challenging content. That’s not to say freedom used to be total; Rubinek tells suspenseful stories of deciding whether or not to go ahead with productions that might have led to jail time, thanks to Toronto’s Morality Police.

He worries that we’re at a dangerous point where we have taken on the role of morality police ourselves, particularly those who haven’t even seen a work before condemning it. This reactionary attitude, he says, is worrying whether it comes from the right or left side of the theatre aisle.

The play’s metatheatricality is another selling point. We’re never completely sure where Rubinek the actor and the character diverge. When Rubinek slips into Shylock’s soft voice, accented with the Polish strains of his grandfather’s words, judgment shaking in every dignified mannerism like the tsking of an ever-working tongue, we’re better able to appreciate that “Saul” is just another act.

Rubinek’s stories about his family are heart-wrenching, keeping the play from slipping into “Uncle Saul at the Thanksgiving table” rant territory. Particularly stunning are moments when he talks about his father’s need to act, and about the Polish farmers who hid his parents for more than two years. Rubinek darkly relates that the husband beat his wife upon finding the hidden Jewish couple, even though he kept their secret. Can we deal with the cognitive dissonance of lauding the farmer for some actions, while condemning others?

The personal aspect gained with Rubinek’s story is both moving and ironic. If Rubinek weren’t sharing his trauma credentials, the show asks, what reactions might we have to his character’s assertion of being “Schrödinger’s minority,” deemed either non-white or white, too backward or too intellectual, uber-Communist or uber-capitalist, depending on what’s convenient to hate? Is it only acceptable if the accent he affects is his grandfather’s voice, or not even then? Am I Jewish enough yet?

While his words are peppered with spicy commentary, Rubinek’s affable personality and Leiren-Young’s use of humour make the dish go down surprisingly easily. Strangely, his claim that Merchant wasn’t written by Shakespeare winds up feeling like both his oldest and hottest take.

Even that tangent reinforces the main message — yes, theatre and acting are inherently appropriative, but in trying on, imagining, and hearing others’ stories we develop understanding and empathy, and it’s very difficult to draw a hard line without having unintended consequences. In other words, like The Runner (if more bluntly and demandingly), it begs the audience to note the shared humanity of all parties.

Maybe the discussion’s not that easy. Maybe it is. There are certainly other reasonable points of view Leiren-Young’s script doesn’t consider.

Am I Jewish enough yet?

A century ago, members of my family operated The Standard, Toronto’s Yiddish theatre, a space now occupied by an RBC branch which was once a hotbed of Jewish leftist activism. The theatre’s license was threatened when its 1933 production of Eight Men Speak, about the raid of the Toronto offices of the Communist Party of Canada, was shut down by the same police that would later target the Toronto Free Theatre. The Standard eventually disappeared from the theatre world, a victim of apathy. Watching Rubinek’s Shylock, I wondered what The Standard would look like today, or what might have happened were it still functioning when the Rubineks left the DP camp for Ottawa, a potential chance for his father to perform again.

Theatre is consistently poised on a precipice where we worry that things will shut down because people care too little, or things will shut down because people care too much. In the nexus between those two states sits Saul Rubinek, espousing the fervent hope that theatre will, instead, teach us to care for each other.

Am I Jewish enough yet?

Playing Shylock runs at Canadian Stage until November 24. Tickets are available here.

Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

WRITTEN BY

Ilana Lucas

Ilana Lucas is a professor of English in Centennial College’s School of Advancement. She is the President of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association. She holds a BA in English and Theatre from Princeton University, an MFA in Dramaturgy and Script Development from Columbia University, and serves as Princeton’s Alumni Schools Committee Chair for Western Ontario. She has written for Brit+Co, Mooney on Theatre, and BroadwayWorld Toronto. Her most recent play, Let’s Talk, won the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival’s 24-Hour Playwriting Contest. She has a deep and abiding love of musical theatre, and considers her year working for the estate of Tony winners Phyllis Newman and Adolph Green one of her most treasured memories.

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REVIEW: In Playing Shylock, Saul Rubinek asks: ‘Am I Jewish enough yet?’

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