Shylock and His Daughter

Despite all the publicity Maurice Schwartz and the Yiddish Art Theater have received in New York during the last few years, and despite the favorable criticisms received by the company from the New York critics, there remains a tendency not to believe without seeing. Bostonians now have a chance to see at the Plymouth Theater, where 1947-48's smash, "Shylock and His Daughter," is staying for a five-performance run.

Watching a play without any understanding of the language makes the performance a unique problem in appreciation. At last night's opening, however, enough of the work came through to make it definitely thought-provoking. The achievement of this interest without the direct language contact ordinarily considered essential was a tribute to the problems discussed in the play and, more than anything else, to the quality of the acting.

Schwartz's reputation, if last night's performance is an example, is well deserved. With a powerful voice, mature stage presence, and a masterful variety of interpretive effects, Schwartz dominated the stage as he went from pity to scorn, from anger to tragic resignation. Other parts were well-played, too.

The play itself has already created considerable comment because of its audacious some would say-reworking of a theme ostensibly treated finally by Shakespeare. The author, Ari Ibn-Zahav, has altered and reinterpreted "The Merchant of Venice," keeping many of Shakespeare's characters and large sections of the plot.

This play attempts to look at the situation from the point of view of the Jew, to discover his motivations, his thoughts, his conflicts. In the process it has managed to give the figure of Shylock a genuine dignity and impressiveness which, at least to this reviewer, the character in Shakespeare's play seems to lack whether sentimentally or straight forwardly played. In this version the story was heavily weighted and sometimes as illogical as Shakespeare, in particular the handling of the escape of Jessica from the ghetto.

The one flaw in the troupe's production was neither its play, which was interesting if at times overdone, nor certainly the performances. The stage devices were a distinct weak spot-the vulgar and obvious music smacking of 19th Century melodrama, the sets shabby and clumsy, and the arrangement of the piece into a number of short scenes out-of-date and annoying. Victorian elements and language aside, however, the evening was distinctly an unusual and rewarding one.