Habitus

by David Gutherz · 07/21/10

As if it weren’t sweltering enough already, this season of New York summer theater has got a lot of Jews shvitzing under the spotlight. First, there was the Public Theater’s staging of the ever-controversial The Merchant of Venice. Probably the most notorious anti-semitic work of art ever produced, I doubt that there ever was, will, or should be a presentation of Shakespeare’s Shylock that won’t anger and annoy members of his Tribe. Sufferance is our badge, after all.  This time around, the most interesting–and for many most enraging–part is the connection many seem to be drawing between between Shylock and recent financial villains. Consider the following anonymous comment, posted as a response to Time Out New York’s review of the piece.

“Sullivan hands us a sublimely faithful version and is disturbing and thought provoking at the same time. One cannot help be reminded of today’s Madoffs, AIGs, Goldman Sachs et al as well as the global explosion of anti-Semitism caused by Israel’s Likud government committing atrocities all in the name of the Torah’s Judaism, instead of the satanic Talmud (of which Shakespeare may well have been aware).”

As it so happens, this season one need not stretch all the way back to the Bard for such reminders, for Madoff himself is the subject of Obie award winner Deborah Margolin’s new play “Imagining Madoff,” opening tonight at Stageworks/Hudson, in Albany. An imagined dialogue between Madoff and Solomon Galkin–a Holocaust survivor, Poet, and victim of Madoff’s ponzi scheme–Margolin’s piece has already been the subject of a firestorm of controversy because its initial version featured Elie Wiesel (who lost upwards of 15 million dollars because of Madoff) as the crook’s interlocutor. And though that draft was scrapped after Wiesel threatened to sue, judging from its early reviews “Imagining Madoff” remains a whimsical reflection on Wiesel as well.