Julia Coffey as Portia and Mark Nelson as Shylock in the Shakespeare Theatre Company’s production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’, directed by Ethan McSweeny. Photo by Scott Suchman.

The Merchant of Venice remains a challenging work for modern audiences, largely because it’s so difficult to suss out exactly how Shakespeare meant it. Subtleties of interpretation can cause the work to swing wildly between poles of anti-semetism and religious/ethnic tolerance, and that’s without even getting into the secondary point of contention, regarding whether two of the main male characters love each other in a more than brotherly way.

Shakespeare Theatre’s current production of the play, directed by Ethan McSweeny, largely leaves the second issue alone, concentrating instead on the differences in heritage and religion that define the tension between its factions. McSweeny highlights those divisions by moving the action from 16th-century Venice to 1920s New York City, a place where there was a neighborhood for every ethnicity, cultural lines reflected in geographical boundaries. Incongruous mentions of Italian cities aside, the transfer works wonderfully. The jazz-age trappings, noir-ish lighting and street level smoke and fog, and a backdrop of speakeasies and organized crime give the proceedings an undercurrent of menace that gives a dark edge to the humor.

That juxtaposition of dark drama and bawdy comedy is one of Merchant‘s defining characteristics, with the light and funny romantic plot of a young man, Bassanio (Drew Cortese) trying to win the hand of the wealthy heiress Portia (Julia Coffey) set against the life-and-death conflict between the titular merchant, Antonio (Derk Smith) and a Jewish moneylender, Shylock (Mark Nelson). Bassanio needs to borrow 3,000 ducats from Antonio to cover the expenses required to become a suitor for Portia. Antonio is eager to help out his dear friend, but with all his cash tied up in business ventures, borrows the money from Shylock, despite the openly contemptuous relationship between the two men. Shylock agrees to the loan, interest-free, but with an unusual condition should Antonio not be able to pay back the principal in three months time: if he defaults, Shylock gets take an actual pound of Antonio’s flesh.

On the streets of the Lower East Side, the conflicts between the Italians and the Jews are a reflection of the dog-eat-dog struggles to get by. It’s a different world out on Portia’s Belmont estate in Long Island, where the privileged, golden-locked poor little rich girl casually tosses her clothes aside for her servants to pick up and laments the tedium of finding a suitable husband, given the dull princes who come calling and her late father’s riddle of a shell game that the suitors must play to win her hand. In this world, casual racism is a given, as she comments offhandedly about the dark skin of one suitor, and another suitor speaks with a Catalan lisp so pronounced that she can’t help but giggle at him.

When all these worlds collide though, the fun and games are in short supply. In the play’s famous climactic trial scene, Portia, disguised as a male lawyer, decides the case of Shylock v. Antonio, as the former tries to collect his pound of flesh when Antonio’s ships literally don’t come in and he can’t pay up. McSweeny milks the scene for all the considerable tension it can deliver, with Portia and her assistant Nerissa feverishly paging through law books looking for a loophole to save Antonio, while Shylock vengefully strops his knife and Antonio bears his chest for the cut.

It’s the scene that defines how the portrayals of these characters play out in the final analysis. Is Shylock’s constant persecution justification for his bloodlust, or does he simply come off as a cruel caricature? Are Antonio and Bassanio victims, or getting their just desserts? Is Portia rescuing her new husband’s best friend, or succumbing to her own racist lust for revenge? McSweeny’s reading throughout the whole play is reflective of most modern takes on Shylock — extremely sympathetic and concentrating on his persecution at the hands of the cruel forces around him; in the trial scene, he clearly goes too far, but it’s hard to blame him. Nelson’s portrayal of the character as a man bursting with barely contained rage from a lifetime of injustice and persecution is magnetic and heartbreaking.

No one comes off worse here than Portia. Her pursuit of emasculating retribution is given self-righteous fire by Coffey’s cruel glee in her discovery of the right legal loophole to not just save Antonio, but to ruin Shylock’s life in the process. Worse than that, with Shylock heartlessly robbed of his daughter, his livelihood, and even his religious identity, she skips gaily back home to Long Island for a little comedic banter with Bassanio.

This final scene is always difficult to watch, with its sexually suggestive and carefree laughs coming hot on the heels of what would have been the dark end of the play had it been a straight tragedy. In this production, it serves to highlight Portia’s heartlessness, toying with Bassanio’s emotions while standing atop the high, grand staircase that forms the centerpiece of the set, playing the sullen coquette for her own amusement, as if she hadn’t just destroyed a man. As everyone gazes up at her, representatives of all three worlds of the play, one has to wonder: is this what their upward mobility is aspiring to? This final scene may be comedic, but it firmly establishes Shakespeare Theatre’s production as a tragedy.

The Merchant of Venice runs through July 24 at the Shakespeare Theatre‘s Sidney Harman Hall. Tickets are available online.