Al Pacino does a mean Shylock in Central Park

'Merchant of Venice' cast includes Jesse L. Martin and Lily Rabe

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

OFF BROADWAY REVIEW

Let's hope Wednesday's opening night weather for "The Merchant of Venice" at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park proved as lovely as what viewers experienced at Saturday's preview.

It was clear and a bit cool and a glowing full moon rose over the Delacorte during the play's final scene at Belmont even as Lorenzo murmured to Jessica, "The moon shines bright. In such a night as this, when the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees and they did make no noise..." and so on with radiant love talk.

Ah — outdoor theater gets no sweeter than when nature conspires with Shakespeare. So long as it's not "The Tempest."

Director Daniel Sullivan conspires fairly well with Shakespeare, too. Moving gracefully to swirling music for strings, piano and horns by Dan Moses Schreier, Sullivan's company offers an assured rendition of the Bard's adjoining stories about the vicious moneylender Shylock, the wise heiress Portia and the several Venetian gentlemen who connect them in that famous courtroom scene.

Dressed by Jess Goldstein in 1900s Edwardian styles for Venice and fairy tale medieval for Belmont —Mark Wendland's scenery involves ironwork fences and tracery that glides around — the actors are a crisp, civilized lot who converse with some elegance.

The nasty exception is Al Pacino's Shylock, a squat, disheveled fellow with a high-pitched city whine and a lowdown air. Looking seedy and speaking slowly, Pacino creates an unsympathetic, unrepentantly spiteful Shylock who appears terribly alien amid such a classy assembly. Even after he is brutally plunged into a pool of water during an interpolated baptism sequence near the play's end, this Shylock scuttles away into the dark looking like a half-drowned rat still up to no good.

Pacino's earthy Shylock and Byron Jennings' anguished Antonio — the merchant of the title — give some weight to the production, which otherwise is airily played. A magnetic presence in her picturesque princess gowns, Lily Rabe's kindly Portia hints at a Kate Hepburn cadence in her silvery delivery. Ever-boyish Hamish Linklater turns touchingly urgent as her suitor Bassanio. The emotions that Rabe and Linklater share during their test scene are many and fervent.

"Law & Order" fans will be glad to learn that Jesse L. Martin brightly portrays a lively best-friend type matched with Marianne Jean-Baptiste's veddy-grand but spirited lady's maid. A low-keyed Bill Heck does nicely by Lorenzo's moonlit exchanges with Heather Lind's subdued Jessica. Of course, that real moon shining above helps them all quite a bit.

Many of the same actors — with the exception of Pacino and Rabe — will also appear in "The Winter's Tale" staged concurrently in the Public Theater's free Shakespeare series.

"The Merchant of Venice" continues in rep with "The Winter's Tale" through Aug. 1 at the Delacorte Theater off W. 81st St. in Central Park, N.Y. Call 212-539-8750 or visit www.shakespeareinthepark.org for details.