Books, Arts & Manners: Merchandising the Merchant

On the surface it seemed like a good idea, having Dustin Hoffman make his Shakespearean and West End debut in The Merchant of Venice as Shylock, that quintessential outsider. It certainly made commercial sense: a month before the show opened on June 1, $3 million worth of tickets had been sold, turning it into the most heavily booked straight play in the history of the West End, and therefore Shakespeare’s biggest London hit yet.

That neither the play nor the intelligent direction of Peter Hall nor the handsome production nor the fine acting of the ensemble was the main attraction became abundantly clear when an indisposed Hoffman bowed out an hour before curtain time one evening a week into the run. Much has been made of the fact that Hoffman is not being treated as a star in either the billing, which is alphabetical, or the curtain calls, which are communal; his unscheduled absence revealed the emptiness of these gestures. While the show was not, like Antonio’s masque, actually canceled, the management did take the unusual step of offering refunds or exchanges for seats during a three-week extension of the limited run, which is now scheduled to end on September 23.

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Eva Resnikova

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On the surface it seemed like a good idea, having Dustin Hoffman make his Shakespearean and West End debut in The Merchant of Venice as Shylock, that quintessential outsider. It certainly made commercial sense: a month before the show opened on June 1, $3 million worth of tickets had been sold, turning it into the most heavily booked straight play in the history of the West End, and therefore Shakespeare’s biggest London hit yet.

That neither the play nor the intelligent direction of Peter Hall nor the handsome production nor the fine acting of the ensemble was the main attraction became abundantly clear when an indisposed Hoffman bowed out an hour before curtain time one evening a week into the run. Much has been made of the fact that Hoffman is not being treated as a star in either the billing, which is alphabetical, or the curtain calls, which are communal; his unscheduled absence revealed the emptiness of these gestures. While the show was not, like Antonio’s masque, actually canceled, the management did take the unusual step of offering refunds or exchanges for seats during a three-week extension of the limited run, which is now scheduled to end on September 23.