Summary 
A sensitive portrayal of Shylock - angry, injured, revealing an all-too-human reflexive vengeance - by an actor with Academy Award pedigree elevates an otherwise pedestrian and unremarkable modernization. A beautifully elegant Portia like a Hollywood icon but diminished by a sometimes plodding pace and lackluster performances in supporting roles.
Design
Directed by Darko Tresnjak. Scenic design by John Lee Beatty. Costume design by Linda Cho. Lighting design by David Weiner. Sound design and Compositions by Jane Shaw. Video design by Matthew Myhrum.
Cast
F. Murray Abraham (Shylock), Andrew Dahl (Balthasar), Grant Goodman (Solanio), Lucas Hall (Bassanio), Kate MacCluggage (Portia), Christen Simon Marabate (Nerissa), Melissa Miller (Jessica), Tom Nelis (Antonio), Christopher Randolph (Prince of Arragon/Tubal), Matthew Schneck (Salerio), Ted Schneider (Gratiano), Raphael Nash Thompson (Prince of Morocco).
Analysis
Darko Tresnjak's modernization of The Merchant of Venice to Wall Street began at New York's Theatre for a New Audience in 2007 and toured to Stratford-Upon-Avon in England before scheduled stops here in Chicago then in Boston and Los Angeles. The sleek update, with soaring upstage walls like looming skyscrapers, is nonetheless dwarfed within the cavernous space of the Bank of America Theatre, the actors seeming tiny and the intimacy of the drama blunted on the large stage. Businessmen and women stride importantly to and fro upon catwalks above the stage, intercut with three large-screen high definition monitors above a trio of iMac laptop personal computers. The atmosphere is hushed and sterile, all bright lights and modern stylings in glass and chrome. Pre-curtain admonitions against cell phones appear on-screen in Italian, Arabic and English.
Tresnjak begins the production with a combined 1.1 and 1.3, showing Antonio as a sophisticated modern businessman in gray hair and a dark suit, abiding young Wall Street turks like Bassanio, who is joined by well-dressed young men wielding Starbucks cups and chest-bumping each other. F. Murray Abraham's dignified Shylock certainly resembles them in conservative business appearance, despite his Jewish yarmulke, but he peruses a newspaper in the age of Internet news and seems far more dignified and old-fashioned. Abraham's amiable Shylock agrees to the loan to Antonio for Bassanio's romantic pursuit of Portia, the bond of a pound of flesh more a graphic off-hand joke than a veiled threat. Pointedly, Bassanio steps between the two men to prevent Antonio from shaking Shylock's hand.
Tresnjak continues with the displaced 1.3 segueing into 2.1, as Kate MacCluggage's elegant Portia awaits - with more than a little dread - the Prince of Morocco. Tall and beautiful, MacCluggage's red-haired and red-lipsticked heroine resembles more a Hollywood starlet than a New York millionairess, strikingly well-dressed and graceful if distinctly stylized in her manner and speech. The three caskets from her father's romantic game are the three laptop personal computers, each with a colored image - lead, silver, gold - projected on the trio of upstage screens. The Prince arrives to the offstage sound of a private helicopter landing on a penthouse rooftop, and he enters like a mid-eastern millionaire, accompanied by his sunglasses-wearing personal pilot. The Prince carries a scimitar and ceremoniously signs a guest book, then stiffly poses for publicity photographs, but soon is enamored with Portia's beauty and elegance.
The Prince's choice of casket is interrupted by the appearance of Launcelot in sneakers, smoking a marijuana joint, as Tresnjak attempts to evoke a somewhat decadent modern milieu. Launcelot appeals to the rushing Bassanio, who barks into a cell phone and carries a garment bag of dry cleaning, and the scene feels awkward, a rather forced exposition, as is the subsequent scene. Wisely blocked with Abraham's Shylock above, observing his daughter Jessica below - sporting green sneakers - as she scurries to conceal her luggage, complete with girlish teddy bear, while a traditional Jewish song plays ion the background.
The 2.4 masque continues the uneasy modernization, as Bassanio and his mates dance badly to club music, swilling liquor from bottles in brown plastic sacks, and they aid Lorenzo 2.6 in helping Jessica, now wearing an oversized hoodie, to escape from Shylock's influence and elope. Tresnjak then shifts back to the Princes and their unwelcome - and unwise - wooing of Portia in a combined 2.7 and 2.9. The oversized monitors flicker with color as Morocco, holding a flute of champagne, laboriously reads the inscriptions on each casket as office workers gather above on the catwalks to casually observe. His errant choice - "all that glisters is not gold" - is oddly revealed by a talking skull image on the corresponding monitor, and it chides him as he is led away by Portia's Bill Gates-like attendant, a techie-attired young man in eyeglasses and an earpiece. The Prince of Arragon then arrives, another millionaire in sunglasses with an overcoat tossed with affectation over a shoulder, and the scene plods as he also reads the inscriptions aloud. Any distress from Portia is dulled by Arragon's overly comic heavy lisp and occasional interplay with his attendants, a pair of sailors in white uniforms and sunglasses, and the "blinking idiot" image is a caricature of him on the silver monitor, disparaging his choice and loss of Portia.
The 2.8 confrontation between two of Antonio's friends and Shylock plays well, a welcome return to the heart of this problematic drama, as they pull cigarettes from packs and discuss Antonio's misfortune as well as Jessica's betrayal. Abraham's Shylock contorts with grief, bent at the waist downstage, and he turns on his fellow businessmen - "you knew!" - when he realizes they have not only kept information from him but have deceived him. His raw emotion vents in unsurprising vitriol at Antonio's financial distress - "let him look to his bond!" - as he lashes out at the first available target then latches on with dogged persistence. Abraham's Shylock nearly collapses in tears over the loss of Jessica in the production's best and most poignant moments, although the anger and pain and sorrow are somewhat blunted when he is consoled by Tubal, showing him - and the audience, via the large monitors - cell phone video of his prized ring. Tresnjak wisely inserts his intermission here, with the audience still buzzing over Abraham's Shylock and his consuming grief, despite the mostly clumsy attempts at modernization.
The second half of the production begins with Bassanio's 3.2 selection of a casket, MacCluggage's Portia now less sophisticated but still striking in a green mini dress and strappy heels, suddenly more youthful and vibrant with her hair down, a more convincing counterpart to the jaded Bassanio in his white Miami Vice clubbing suit. Launcelot sings while Bassanio deliberates, and Portia becomes animated, barely able to restrain herself. When he chooses correctly, he kneels before her to accept her kiss as the attendants dutifully applaud.
The 3.3 appearance of Antonio in a prison jumpsuit and metal handcuffs breaks the supposedly romantic moment, the none-too-subtle images on the screens now the blindfolded statue of justice, a sharp knife, and the scales of justice, with Jessica spot lit, included but not a part of the supposedly heroic Christian group. Tresnjak's key 4.1 trial scene begins with Antonio dragged onstage, flanked by his jailers, surrounded by armed riot police in helmets and vests. As Bassanio takes his place upstage right and the gratingly vocal Gratiano upstage left, an offstage judge's voice intones, and Abraham's Shylock appears above, enduring catcalls as he unfolds a pocket knife. He sharpens the blade upon a whetstone and ignores their pleas - "shall I have it?" - raising the knife to threaten Antonio. Portia and Nerissa arrive in disguise wearing suits and ties and black plastic eyeglass frames, but despite MacCluggage's eloquent presence, the scene disappoints, played out with perfunctory delivery rather than passion, although there is an interesting exchange during which Antonio spits on Shylock and Abraham's Shylock spits right back. Shylock's humiliations are piled upon him, guards and riot police preventing his exit, and when Antonio demands he convert to Christianity, Gratiano pulls off the Jew's yarmulke and hurls it to the ground. The lack of mercy from those who moments before were seeking mercy for themselves reverberates in a long moment of silence as Shylock exits in abject defeat.
After Antonio must holler at Bassanio for him to surrender his wedding ring to the victorious lawyer, the concluding 5.1 scenes bear an undertone of hollow victory. Jessica and Lorenzo lounge uneasily in bath robes, the monitors showing images of a roaring fire in a hearth, candlesticks lit around them. The home is furnished in Ikea-style chrome and glass, and Jessica abandons their victory - "I am never merry" - as Portia jerks her hand away from Antonio's kiss. When she and Nerissa exit then return again attired as lawyer and assistant, the already strained playfulness of the mood is belied by Jessica, who falls to her knees in sobs, then an uneasy slow dance to a jazzy beat, the couples - Portia and Bassanio, Gratiano and Nerissa - seemingly aware and disturbed by their actions. A thoughtful conclusion to a too-often laborious production, ironically deadened by its own modernization to soul-deadened Wall Street.