Playing Shylock - The Missing Greedo & Gringott's Scene
Last chance to check out Playing Shylock - closing December 8, 2024
Mark Leiren-Young & Saul Rubinek discussing line changes…
I’m excited to be heading back to Toronto soon to catch the final performances of Playing Shylock. I’ll try to write about that here. Meanwhile, here’s an interview with me from The Jewish Independent by Sam Margolis. It starts like this…
Victoria playwright Mark Leiren-Young spent October in Toronto, where his Playing Shylock is appearing at Berkeley Street Theatre through Nov. 24. The one-man show, which stars Saul Rubinek, is based on the Jewish character in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice.
“I’ve been attending rehearsals, run-throughs and previews as a playwright,” Leiren-Young told the Independent from Toronto before the play’s world premiere. “That means I’m around to work on the script with the actor and director. Since it’s a new script, that means I’m adjusting it to reflect ideas that come up in rehearsals, working with the costumes, the designs and the space. Really, anything that needs doing to get the script as tight and right for the actor and the production as it can be – making sure ideas are clear, jokes land and that Saul is having as much fun as possible.”
For the rest please check out Sam’s story here: A Shylock written for Rubinek
Since Sam wrote about the revisions I thought I’d share one here…
Part of the wild ride of developing Playing Shylock is how much material we tried and cut. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “kill your darlings” the rehearsal hall at CanStage is littered with enough darlings to fill another solo play.
Students in one of my writing classes at the University of Victoria asked how the cuts happened. One very early round of cuts came down to losing references to off-stage incidents, places and characters that didn’t clearly pay off in multiple places in the story. One of the later - and more painful rounds - came down to listening to when the character on stage sounded more like me than it did like the character of Saul Rubinek in Playing Shylock (who is not Saul Rubinek).
This was one of the darlings that I held onto longer than I should have because… I really wanted Saul to say this on stage. I do think this felt Saul-like in performance- but once Saul did a run without it, I just couldn’t make the case for putting it back ‘cause this really was more me than on-stage Saul. But, hey, that’s what Substack is for right…
Here’s a cut scene from Playing Shylock on Jewish representation in Hollywood…
SAUL Jonathan Lebowitz, Jon Stewart, called out the Harry Potter movies for the Jewish bankers who run Gringots. Yeah, those trolls barely look Jewish at all. Unless you look at the caricatures of Jews that the Nazis used to draw. And they’re identical. And when I took my son to that Star Wars for the first time, the one where young Luke Skywalker is the slave of a Jewish pawn broker... and the cherry on the cheesecake... the actor who did the voice of the flying hook-nosed alien Jew based his performance on Fagin from Oliver Twist - one of Dickens’ classic evil Jews. The flying Jew bat can’t even be controlled by Obi Wan Kenobi because - he actually says this: “Your Jedi mind tricks won’t work on me. Only money.” This Muppet out Shylocks Shylock. To me this made Mel Gibson look like Mel Brooks. And people were outraged - about Jar Jar Binks. Same terrible movie. But Jewish stereotypes that play like Nazi propaganda? No one blinks. The Jews who supposedly run Hollywood are fine with that.
A few more reviews of Playing Shylock that I popped up after my most recent Substack.
SCRUTINY | Saul Rubinek Makes A Triumphant Return To Toronto With Canadian Stage’s Playing Shylock
Here are the best Toronto theatre productions to see right now
And here’s the latest from the Skaana Substack…
