Washington Post - Somewhat Recommended
"...The production, imagined by director Ethan McSweeny as a Roaring Twenties tussle between immigrant factions of Little Italy and the Lower East Side, tries too desperately to squeeze conceptual pegs into Shakespearean holes. Aren’t we over the era of gimmicky, half-logical shifts of geography and time? Not that literalism has to reign autocratically — but why are all these New Yorkers going on about Venice?"
MetroWeekly - Recommended
"...Derek Smith brings more ambiguous shadings to his portrayal of Antonio, whose devotion to the dashing Bassanio (Drew Cortese) creates all this trouble to begin with. Bassanio needs money to woo the heiress Portia (Julia Coffey) at her country estate. Antonio would loan him the money, but his cash is tied up in ships at sea, so he turns to Shylock and dismisses the ''pound of flesh'' bond, confident that his shipping deals will pay off before the loan is due."
Talkin Broadway - Highly Recommended
"...Director Ethan McSweeny's fascinating production of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice for Washington's Shakespeare Theatre Company succeeds in being very funny while making the audience uncomfortable about exactly why they're laughing."
Washingtonian - Recommended
"...Director Ethan McSweeny is also a local boy made good. He’s taken a risk, setting Merchant in New York in the late 1920s, when Italian and Jewish immigrants bumped up against each other in adjoining neighborhoods. When it works, the effect is stunning. The slick-suited, fedora’d tough guys and the black-garbed Orthodox Jews create a picture straight out of the Daguerreotypes of old New York. They play against a backdrop of the steel girders of an elevated subway, the cafes of Little Italy, and the pushcarts of the Lower East Side. There’s a hilarious scene when some of the Italians dress up like bearded Hasids to help Jessica elope."
BrightestYoungThings - Recommended
"...For all its grotesque plotting, The Merchant of Venice is primarily classified as a comedy, and scenes that aim for laughs earn them. As an effete suitor, Vaneik Echeverria chews the scenery and makes the most of his unlikely prop. Coffey, on the other hand, plays Portia as if she's ready to bite the heads off her suitors. It’s a gutsy choice, yet Coffey is easily likable because the nearby men are never her equal. Her games take on a mean-spirited quality when she tortures Bassanio over a missing ring, and still the scene works because Portia has prudent motives and Bassanio is righteous, if a little dim. Even during scenes of gentle mistaken identity and cruel anti-semitic screeds, McSweeny and his cast handle the material with intelligence . If The Merchant of Venice is a “problem play,” its complications are a testament to our virtues and flaws and what makes us human."
ShowBizRadio - Highly Recommended
"...Director McSweeny has recruited actors who enliven the twits and jerks who form Shylock’s milieu. As Portia, Julia Coffey is like a Long Island debutante right out of F. Scott Fitzgerald. She buckles down and gets serious, however, when she gets a chance to enter the real world. She is disguised as a lawyer/judge. She torments Shylock with cold calculation. With a bit of cocaine, one can easily imagine this Portia making a name for herself as an inspired dominatrix."
Curtain Up - Recommended
"...In spite of a weak supporting cast, unflattering costumes (by Jennifer Moeller) and a script that demands considerable suspension of disbelief, particularly when Portia does not recognize her betrothed, this Merchant of Venice is highly entertaining and that's what makes it new on the Rialto. "
MD Theatre Guide - Highly Recommended
"...From the start – the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s version of The Merchant of Venice crackles with electricity amid the hustle-bustle of a large commerce-driven metropolis. On a one-size-fits-all set, trisected by levels and diagonalized by a sweeping three-story staircase, booze-fueled revelers burst through a set of wooden doors in a crazed conga line as they whirl past the train station’s café and into the ether of billowing locomotive steam. The set seems lifted from the Main Concourse at Grand Central Station in New York City, and that’s a good thing because this version of Shakespeare’s familiar tragicomedy has been shape-shifted into The Jazz Age of the 1920′s and launched into the era of hot flappers and cool bathtub gin."
DCTheatreScene - Recommended
McSweeny chooses to reimagine Merchant as set in jazz-age New York, and he establishes his theme with authority from the very first instant (set designer Andrew Lieberman is a most accomplished accomplice). Lowlifes – Salerio and his thuggish buddy Solanio (Tim Getman) among them – prowl the smoky streets, and everyone everywhere is on the take. The boozy citizenry violate the prohibition statutes with impunity; at one point a cop takes a bribe, and delivers a portion of it to the lordly Duke, who accepts it with disdainful satisfaction.
