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Daily Planet Correspondent 

SAN FRANCISCO – Welsh actor Gareth Armstrong, a veteran of Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company, brought his wonderful one-man show “Shylock” to the Bay Area Tuesday, opening it at San Francisco’s Gershwin Theater for a run that continues through the end of this month. 

Armstrong’s play, which he also wrote, is a fascinating, humorous and sobering deconstruction of the life, character and motivation of one of Shakespeare’s most famous and controversial characters – the moneylender Shylock from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice.” 

Although Armstrong plays several characters in his solo show, mostly he performs as the character Tubal. 

Tubal is Shylock’s Jewish friend in “The Merchant of Venice,” a minor character in that play, with a scant eight lines. 

But Tubal is master of ceremonies for the current evening. With humor and wit, he speaks directly to the audience and recounts much fascinating literary, theatrical, historical and mythological information on the subject of Shylock, Shakespeare, Jews, theater, history and European culture. 

Tubal’s gloss on all these topics is interwoven with the five actual scenes from “Merchant of Venice” in which Shylock appears. 

Tubal has a lot to say, and he says it well. He reminds us that Shylock, Tubal and Shylock’s daughter Jessica are the only Jewish characters in all of Shakespeare. 

He adds that Shakespeare himself may never have met a Jew since Jews were chased out of England 300 years earlier, and fills us in on the details of that shocking episode in history. 

We learn also that Shakespeare borrowed his plot for “Merchant” from a 14th century Italian comedy, and that Jews were stock comic villains in European theater. 

There is interesting information about Shakespeare and Richard Burbage, Shakespeare’s leading man for 20 years, and humorous speculation by Armstrong on which actor in the original troupe played Shylock, and who got stuck with Tubal’s meager eight lines. 

Armstrong’s Tubal tracks interesting literary trivia about “Merchant” over the last 400 years – from Oliver Cromwell’s 17th century closing of English theaters for 18 years, to a rewrite of “Merchant” that entirely omitted Tubal in public performance for nearly a century, to an 18th century Drury Lane revival that turned “Merchant” into a 40-year national hit. 

There is discussion of Edmund Kean’s drunken performances, Henry Irving’s legendary 1,000 19th century performances of Shylock, and Jewish Max Reinhardt’s pre-Nazi 20th century German productions. 

Finally, humorously, Armstrong puts Shylock on the psychiatrist’s couch, where doctor and patient explore what Shylock’s real motivations might be for demanding a pound of flesh. 

Running 90 minutes without an intermission, Armstrong and director Frank Barrie have created a staging and a performance that are intelligent, thoughtful, probing, questioning, and often humorous. Only occasionally does Armstrong’s Welsh accent accidentally overtake the Elizabethan characters. 

The only slightly unsatisfactory note for me in “Shylock” is the very final one, which closes the play on Shylock’s broken heart over his dead wife. That experience doesn’t sum up the range of what Armstrong’s play has dealt with, or put it in an adequate final perspective. 

But otherwise, this is a great show, and highly recommended. 

Hosted by the San Francisco Shakespeare Festival, “Shylock” runs through April 30 at the Gershwin Theater, 2350 Turk Blvd., San Francisco. For tickets and information, call 415-392-4400.