SOURCE: Marks, Peter. “From Serban, the Shylock of Yesteryear, A Go-To Guy.” New York Times (13 January 1999): 1.

In the following review of Andrei Serban's production of The Merchant of Venice for the American Repertory Theater, Marks finds Will LeBow's Shylock to be the most moving aspect of the production.

Let Shylock be Shylock! is the unspoken motto of Andrei Serban's daringly unapologetic production of The Merchant of Venice.

Shed no tears for the Jewish moneylender of Mr. Serban's design. Shylock may be cruelly maligned by the Christian hypocrites in Shakespeare's difficult play, with its anti-Semitic overtones, but in this version he has hardly been conceived as a figure to touch the heart. Though it has become customary to render Shylock with compassion, as in Peter Hall's 1989 Broadway production, in which Dustin Hoffman's dignified pillar of a Shylock endured the taunts and a shower of spittle from his enemies, Mr...