David Birney, playing Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in Venice; certainly delivers the goods here. Birney's Shylock has traits and qualities that make perfect sense as post-medieval survival skills for an oppressed people reluctantly allowed into the European world of commerce.

Birney never loses his grip on the long-besieged patience of the man. Since [he] subdues the glee Shylock is feeling when his vengeance is assured, what comes across to us is deeper than revenge. This Shylock certainly enjoys his visceral thrill in victory, but clearly he also is redressing age-old injustices perpetrated upon Jews in Europe, turning the law against the biased makers of those laws.

...the troupe has a trump card ­ film and TV star David Birney. His detailed, beneath-the-skin rendering of one of Shakespeare¹s more complicated characters bore that out.

Birney's Shylock has a Human Face: Birney put a very human face on much-maligned, and vengeful, Shylock. When he makes his final exit, broken, and forced to give up his faith. Birney is about the one character we feel for serious stuff.

The highlight of this production is Birney¹s complete immersion in the role of Shylock. His ability to convey a kind of quiet dignity and keenly felt pain rounds the character from its greed and malevolence.

In the wrong hands, Shylock can be a cartoon, a ranting, raving lunatic who, in the end, gets what he deserves. But where there is caricature, Birney offers nuance. The anger that boils within him is tenuously contained, as if with superhuman effort, as Shylock internalizes the slings and arrows of persecution for being a jew in a mostly Christian world. His explosions, when they come, are riveting. But it¹s in the pauses that we come to understand Birney¹s feel for the character, the moments where almost nothing is being said, but a great depth of feeling is emoted.  It's a masterful performance in a difficult role.

David Birney does a masterful, awesome Shylock. His Shylock is more than Shylock. It is a nuanced portrayal that shows an awareness of the universality of the human condition, that recognizes Shakespeare's connection to the collective unconscious.