In the early days, the initial run to fleeing sense and proportion to say nothing of dignity, respect, or the holy, the profaning previews, the underrehearsed, the yetunfinished, not quite there — they’d tried to class it up a bit with witty bits, highbrowraising oneoffs that failed (they being the first three of the spectacle’s by now twelve directors fired, or quit, or else disappeared both), such as progressive readings of the Law by prominent voiceover talent, Talmudic debates accompanied by interpretive dance performed on one leg; disputations of the type once held between popes, papabili, priests, and the rabbinate, or with the sacredly simple, devolving into mere roundtable discussions in which no position’s untenable, arguments without consequence, nothing at stake at which any will burn and so, worthless; in which every opinion’s welcomed, countenanced and considered, given an air, suffusued by the pedalheavy, flatfingered pianist Siamese plunking selections from the opera of the Second Viennese — intermezzi between the acts of this revue initially abriged, then outright freely adapted (destroyed, copyright wronged, misprinted corrupt like the program notes crumpled by the showrooms’ shined exit doors); as scenes from The Tempest became interpolated with others of The Merchant of Venice under a entire script of provisionary titles, including Don’t Be Shy, Live Long & Prospero, A Few Pounds of Wet Flesh, and Such A Big Storm As You Wouldn’t Believe; in which, we’ll be quick and synopsize the summary, Ben as the Shylock sells the King of Sicily who he’s surprisingly Aryan, well-mannered and handsome as if, a dinghy secondhand known as the S.S. Putz, which founders then sinks, stranding the King and his entourage on an Island named Coney off the coast of south Brooklyn where they can’t speak the language, are forced to dress heavily, eat oversalted foods, and pay retail; an Island lorded over by the Shylock’s business associate and, as it happens, His brother-inlaw, widely known as the Third Assistant Rabbi of Besonhurst. In the final scene, the Shylock, the Rabbi’s onemensch agency, rubs His hands, as greedily stagedirected, then offers the King, in a memorable soliloquy, safe passage off the Island He’s saying,
SHYLOCK:
I’ll deliver all,
and promise you calm seas and auspicious gales,
and sail so expeditious, that shall catch
your royal fleet far off
for a hundred shekels
a head…audiences suffering this and other such Narrisch,
Mishegas (such as vocabulary tutorials: Nonsense, Insanity…a blackboarded, graybearded explanation of the Theory of Relativity as interpreted by a professor recently sabbaticaled from Cal State, the selection of an audience member for a stint upon the stage’s analysandical pleather, a Doctor Tweiss impersonator attending; regional stock actors and actresses reading drastically edited excerpts of poetry and prose in up to and including onehundred languages: the corpora of many, from that of Modernity’s most exalted — persecuted, the truth is — names to that of Moses’ God, Who’ll be theirs by curtain; to be followed by a Mary or two as a ventriloquistic Hanna & Daughter as featured in a potboiler of a cooking segment, before the mime’s hauled out yet again to demonstrate appropriate application of tallis and tefillin upon an attractive, intelligent, altogether responsive volunteer, preselected only after being pre-screened); husbands woken up by wives woken up by kinder eyes and ears unhanded throughout for the good stuff it’s called, though a majority of them’ve left before the encore to beat traffic, make the midnight buffet.
