Monday, October 15, 2007
Merchant on Venice is EXTENDED!
Due to popular demand, we will be adding 2 weeks of performances of Merchant on Venice! The show now runs through November 18 -- you can catch a preview of the show on StageChannel.com.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Review Roundup
Critics are raving about Merchant on Venice! Here's what they're saying:
Gerardo Cardenas (left), Andy Nagraj (center), and Marvin Quihada (right)
Sadieh Rifai (foreground) and Anish Jethmalani (background)
Playing now through November 4 -- purchase tickets online at http://www.srtp.org/productions.html!
"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."
--Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune
"BRAVO...a sparkling production...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."
-- Barbara Vitello, The Daily Herald
"CRITIC'S PICK...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."
-- Kerry Reid, The Reader
Playing now through November 4 -- purchase tickets online at http://www.srtp.org/productions.html!
Monday, October 1, 2007
Merchant on Venice is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Check out our review in the Chicago Sun-Times:
Worldly Hindus take on a strict Muslim
THEATER REVIEW | Take another look at the Bard's 'Merchant'
October 1, 2007
BY HEDY WEISS Theater Critic
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. Stage this production at the outdoor Delacorte Theater and you can bet half the Indian immigrant population of Queens will be lined up for seats, with the Muslims of Brooklyn right behind them.
And you thought this was a story of Renaissance-era Venice, where rich Christian businessmen crassly used, abused and finally destroyed the Jew who lived among them. Think again. Kurup (born in India, raised in Kenya, a longtime transplant to the United States), has a Salman Rushdie-like fluency in cross-cultural, pop-cultural hijinks and a flair for highly ornamented, wildly comical linguistic flights. And in updating his "Merchant" to contemporary Venice, Calif. -- where wealthy, worldly Hindus face off against a prosperous, ultra-conservative Muslim -- he has heightened the controversy for our times and conjured a feast of behavioral and musical correspondences that do Shakespeare proud.
And you thought this was a story of Renaissance-era Venice, where rich Christian businessmen crassly used, abused and finally destroyed the Jew who lived among them. Think again. Kurup (born in India, raised in Kenya, a longtime transplant to the United States), has a Salman Rushdie-like fluency in cross-cultural, pop-cultural hijinks and a flair for highly ornamented, wildly comical linguistic flights. And in updating his "Merchant" to contemporary Venice, Calif. -- where wealthy, worldly Hindus face off against a prosperous, ultra-conservative Muslim -- he has heightened the controversy for our times and conjured 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 -- is ambitious and delicious on many levels.
Director Stuart Carden's exceptionally buoyant, Bollywood-infused production -- with an ethnic cast that clearly thrives on this material -- is ambitious and delicious on many levels.
The merchant here is Devendra (Kamal Hans), an Indian import-export mogul. Short of cash when it is needed by Jitendra (Andy Nagraj), the down-on-his-luck Bollywood actor he secretly loves -- and who is pursuing the spoiled L.A. princess, Pushpa (a glittering Pranidhi Varshney) -- he makes a deal with Sharuk (the superb Anish Jethmalani), the local Muslim he abhors. With comic genius from Tariq Vasudeva as a mama's boy striver, and inspired work by Amira Sabbagh, Marvin Quihada, Madrid St. Angelo, Vincent P. Mahler, Gerardo Cardenas and Sadieh Rifai, the energy and emotional intensity never flag.
Worldly Hindus take on a strict Muslim
THEATER REVIEW | Take another look at the Bard's 'Merchant'
October 1, 2007
BY HEDY WEISS Theater Critic
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. Stage this production at the outdoor Delacorte Theater and you can bet half the Indian immigrant population of Queens will be lined up for seats, with the Muslims of Brooklyn right behind them.
And you thought this was a story of Renaissance-era Venice, where rich Christian businessmen crassly used, abused and finally destroyed the Jew who lived among them. Think again. Kurup (born in India, raised in Kenya, a longtime transplant to the United States), has a Salman Rushdie-like fluency in cross-cultural, pop-cultural hijinks and a flair for highly ornamented, wildly comical linguistic flights. And in updating his "Merchant" to contemporary Venice, Calif. -- where wealthy, worldly Hindus face off against a prosperous, ultra-conservative Muslim -- he has heightened the controversy for our times and conjured a feast of behavioral and musical correspondences that do Shakespeare proud.
And you thought this was a story of Renaissance-era Venice, where rich Christian businessmen crassly used, abused and finally destroyed the Jew who lived among them. Think again. Kurup (born in India, raised in Kenya, a longtime transplant to the United States), has a Salman Rushdie-like fluency in cross-cultural, pop-cultural hijinks and a flair for highly ornamented, wildly comical linguistic flights. And in updating his "Merchant" to contemporary Venice, Calif. -- where wealthy, worldly Hindus face off against a prosperous, ultra-conservative Muslim -- he has heightened the controversy for our times and conjured 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 -- is ambitious and delicious on many levels.
Director Stuart Carden's exceptionally buoyant, Bollywood-infused production -- with an ethnic cast that clearly thrives on this material -- is ambitious and delicious on many levels.
The merchant here is Devendra (Kamal Hans), an Indian import-export mogul. Short of cash when it is needed by Jitendra (Andy Nagraj), the down-on-his-luck Bollywood actor he secretly loves -- and who is pursuing the spoiled L.A. princess, Pushpa (a glittering Pranidhi Varshney) -- he makes a deal with Sharuk (the superb Anish Jethmalani), the local Muslim he abhors. With comic genius from Tariq Vasudeva as a mama's boy striver, and inspired work by Amira Sabbagh, Marvin Quihada, Madrid St. Angelo, Vincent P. Mahler, Gerardo Cardenas and Sadieh Rifai, the energy and emotional intensity never flag.
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