World Premiere of Merchant on Venice

Excerpted Reviews from Shishir Kurup's Merchant on Venice

From Chris Jones @ Chicago Tribune

"Hottest Ticket in Town" "Highly Recommended"

" Shishir Kurup's remarkable polycultural deconstruction of William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, will have an extensive international life...10 times as funny, smart, and intellectually stimulating as The Bomb-itty of Errors...a must-see for anyone who follows progressive approaches to Shakespeare...a big, new, risky, rambunctious show...uncannily accurate and transformative...a superb piece of passionate, irreverent, insightful writing...if you have a teenager studying this difficult play, a trip to see Kurup's eye-popping version will have their eyes bulging out of their sockets."

"Stuart Carden's very lively production is a new high for Silk Road. Anchored by the complex Anish Jethmalani as Sharuk, the piece also features a very funny performance from Tariq Vasudeva and rich, punky work from the youthful likes of Sadieh Rifai, Amira Sabbagh and, especially, Pranidhi Varshney as Portia, er, Pushpa."

"Silk Road has been promising us new work of international repute. They have most assuredly delivered."

From Hedy Weiss @ Chicago Sun-Times

"HIGHLY RECOMMENDED ...hip, funny, ingeniously reconfigured world premiere...Kurup has a Salman Rushdie-like fluency in cross-cultural, pop-cultural hijinks...highly ornamented, wildly comical linguistic flights...a feast of behavioral and musical correspondences that do Shakespeare proud..."

"Director Stuart Carden's exceptionally buoyant, Bollywood-infused production with an ethnic cast that clearly thrives on this material...ambitions and delicious on many levels...the energy and emotional intensity never flag."

"Note to New York's Public Theater, producer of Shakespeare in Central Park: Send a scout to see the Silk Road Theatre Project's hip, funny, ingeniously reconfigured world premiere of "Merchant on Venice," Shishir Kurup's reinvention of Shakespeare's most controversial play."



From Kerry Reid @ Chicago Reader

"Highly Recommended" "Critics Pick"

"Shishir Kurup doesn't merely update the Elizabethan vernacular (he keeps the iambs) in his bold, smart, sardonic reinvention of one of Shakespeare's most troubling plays. He also skillfully weaves in post-9/11 paranoia about "the other" as well as the prejudices of competing immigrant groups on LA's Venice Boulevard."

"Bold, smart, sardonic reinvention...skillfully weaves in post-9/11 paranoia...layers of cultural dissonance both intriguing and disturbing."

"Stuart Carden's spirited world premiere staging highlights equally the script's sinister undertones and its giddy polyglot mix of traditional and pop-culture references."

From Barbara Vitello @ Daily Herald

" A sparkling production directed by Stuart Carden"

"BRAVO ...both more hopeful and more ambiguous than Shakespeare's...Kurup's wit and wordplay and the pop culture references peppering the play make it so palatable to a 21st century audience...this show delights...an eloquent plea for tolerance and forgiveness...Kurup solves Shakespeare's problem."

From Kris Vire @ Time Out Chicago

"Carden's playful production matches Kurup's SoCal script: a refreshing breath of smoggy air."

"A bracing, ingenious pop-cult revamp of Shakespeare's Merchant proves that the Bard's themes and style still resonate.

"The Muslim Sharuk is played by Anish Jethmalani as equal parts fire and ice."

"Sharuk is neither caricatured villain nor martyred victim. The playwright equalizes the blame for the conflict in the trial scene, highlighting the two sides' efforts to demonize one another rather than focus on what they share (made more compelling here, where both factions are minorities in the so-called great melting pot)."

Through November 18th at Silk Road Theatre Project
www.srtp.org