This play starring Canadian acting legend Saul Rubinek is one of the most provocative and urgent shows of the year

“Playing Shylock,” Mark Leiren-Young’s provocative solo play at Canadian Stage, offering a searing critique of cancel culture in the arts, could not have arrived at a more urgent moment — as the Canadian cultural landscape is at a crossroads. 
This year alone, across the country, we’ve witnessed multiple theatre companies cancel controversial productions amid pressure from activists. In January, the Belfry Theatre in Victoria, B.C., pulled from its lineup “The Runner,” Christopher Morris’ one-man show about an Orthodox Jewish volunteer who is plunged into a moral reckoning after he chooses to save a Palestinian woman, instead of the Israeli soldier she’s accused of attacking. Critics of the play argued that its narrative dehumanized Palestinian and Arab voices. The theatre subsequently acquiesced to the protesters’ demands, cancelling the production and issuing a statement that read, “This is not the time for a play which may further tensions among our community.”
Just over a week later, the PuSh Festival in Vancouver also cancelled “The Runner” after another artist at the festival said he’d withdraw his work if Morris’ play remained in the lineup. The PuSh Festival’s decision to axe the production came despite strong opposition from other community groups and after organizers initially said that they were moving forward with the show (following the cancellation at the Belfry Theatre). 
Then, in March, a production of “Sisters,” a drama about residential school abuse, was called off at another Victoria playhouse after the theatre received complaints that the play’s author was white and the show put too much focus on the voice of the oppressors. (The show follows a young nun who works at a residential school. The production’s director said the focus of the show is not meant to be on Indigenous students, but instead on how ordinary people can be capable of evil things.) 
This concerning trend extends beyond the theatre. This fall, screenings of “Russians at War,” a documentary about the conflict in Ukraine, were paused at the Toronto Film Festival after organizers received “significant threats” from protesters, who claimed the film was pro-Russian propaganda. Even elected officials, including Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, weighed in, calling on the festival to drop the film. But when it did ultimately open, the documentary received critical acclaim. 
So, it’s in this messy environment in which “Playing Shylock” has debuted. And it feels like a welcome voice of reason amid the chaos.
Adapted from Leiren-Young’s 1996 play, “Shylock,” this 80-minute work has been updated for our present moment and stars Canadian acting legend Saul Rubinek, who plays a fictionalized version of himself. But, in truth, it’s impossible to discern where fiction ends and reality begins in the playwright’s deceptively intimate, yet expansively eye-opening, narrative.
Structured as a play-within-a-play, Leiren-Young drops his audience into a parallel universe. We’re watching a controversial production of “The Merchant of Venice,” running at Canadian Stage. When “Playing Shylock” begins, we’re about to start the second half of the Shakespearean comedy. 
Rubinek, returning to the stage for the first time in decades, is playing Shylock, a Jewish moneylender who demands a pound of flesh as collateral from Antonio, an antisemitic merchant and the play’s title character. 
But when Rubinek makes his entrance after intermission, he stops the show. Wearing an expression of shock mixed with anger, he announces, almost breathlessly, that the production has been cancelled. Cancelled because his portrayal of Shylock — as a Jewish man himself — has angered members of the Jewish community, who’ve petitioned for the production to be shuttered. 
After he shares the news, Rubinek lingers on stage before launching into a heartfelt, and occasionally humorous, monologue, slowing stripping out of his costume — and out of character — in the process. He explains that Shylock has always been a dream role. Though the character is drawn from a composite of antisemitic tropes, Rubinek argues that it’s the first major role in the theatrical canon specifically written for a Jew.
And it’s a part, he explains, that so fully illuminates what antisemitism really is and looks like. “That’s the beauty of art,” the actor says. “It contains multitudes.” 
Playing Shylock is also deeply personal for Rubinek: his father, an actor in Yiddish theatre, always wanted to play the part but was silenced by the Nazis. (Rubinek himself — and this is true in reality — was born in a displaced-persons camp after the end of the Second World War.) So, stepping into the role of Shylock not only fulfils his own dream, Rubinek explains, but also that of his father. 
In scenes like this, as fact bleeds into fiction, it’s impossible to ignore the meta quality of “Playing Shylock.” That Rubinek and the production’s director, Martin Kinch, are also the co-founders of the Toronto Free Theatre, the precursor of Canadian Stage, only adds to the meta-ness. 
Kinch stages the show unobtrusively on Shawn Kerwin’s set, depicting a world in decay. Rubinek is a transfixing presence on stage, his baritone voice reverberating in its shouts and reverential in its whispers. 
Leiren-Young, meanwhile, draws deeply from Rubinek and Kinch’s personal history with the theatre company. In one of the play’s most poignant scenes, Rubinek discusses how the cancellation of “The Merchant of Venice” stirs memories of another cancellation at Toronto Free Theatre more than half a century ago, when their production of “Clear Light” was shut down by the morality police. (Yes, it’s a true story.) 
“Isn’t censoring a play far more dangerous than performing it?” Rubinek asks. 
Though “Playing Shylock” provokes many questions like this, rarely does it provide answers. Nor should it. But, at times, the play’s clear-eyed arguments in support of free artistic expression seem to oversimplify the complex issues it aims to tackle.
While Leiren-Young makes it easy for the audience to sympathize with Rubinek and his logic, the protesters who come for the Shakespeare play are rendered more hazily. Yet their point of view may be equally valid. 
When does unchecked freedom of expression open up a forum for hate? Where do we draw the line? And how can we find nuance and compromise in an art form, a medium, that not only feels, but truly is, so personal and subjective? 
If “Playing Shylock” brings us no closer to settling that debate, at least it offers a safe space to consider these ideas. And in this current moment of knee-jerk reactions, we are most definitely in need of that.