Birth of Shylock & the Death of Zero Mostel (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

You wouldn't know it from the feel-good features usually accompanying a new production, but a play's journey from first draft to opening night is often rough, including many more wrong turns than right ones. British playwright Wesker recounts the harrowing journey of one of his less successful plays, Shylock, a modern deconstruction of Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. With bracing honesty, and quoting freely from letters written and received as well as his own journal entries, Wesker documents every twist, turn, and setback he endured trying, first, to get his play written and, then, up and running on a stage somewhere. There were friends who disliked the play, producers who wouldn't touch it, and heated correspondence back and forth. Ultimately, it got a Broadway production starring the brilliant but infuriating Zero Mostel as Shylock, at which point Wesker's problems really began. To say more would spoil the fun of this fascinating account, though Wesker's title reveals the bad turn that made the production notorious in the fall of 1977: Mostel's sudden death during previews. Jack Helbig

From Kirkus Reviews

A passionate, peppery backstage diary of a play's lifespan, from inception to its star's death and its own demise on Broadway, by the contentious playwright of Chips with Everything. In 1974, after seeing Lawrence Olivier's oy-vey performance in The Merchant of Venice, Wesker decided to rewrite Shakespeare from a pro-Semitic perspective: a cultured, religious Shylock, a bosom friend of the weary Venetian merchant Antonio, who enters into a contract only because of the city law's requirements, but who agrees with Shylock's scheme to make it into ``a nonsense bondto mock the law'' by having a pound of flesh as security. Wesker was unable to get the play produced in London, where his recent track record was spotty and his relations with several theaters disaffected. In a stroke of amazing fortune, New York Broadway producers, the Shuberts, offered to back his Merchant thanks to the interest of a bankable starthe great comedian Zero Mostel. Wesker was also thankful to get his friend John Dexter, who was then based in New York, to direct. Unfortunately, behind the scenes things fall predictably apart as Wesker and Dexter fight over cuts, American actors rankle under British stage tradition, and Mostel overwhelms Wesker's text in an exuberant performance that would be cut short after one night by a heart aneurysm. Wesker airs grievances against his play's fate with the publication of this diary, with its score-settling footnotes. Also, for a book that will appeal mostly to those passionately interested in the stage, Wesker's habit of footnoting the obvious, whether famous figures such as Lindsay Anderson and Robert Bolt or explanations of blocking and notes, is as distracting as someone coughing after the curtain goes up. Although Wesker is a prickly impresario, his vivid, often obsessive record brings to life backstage drama, theater politics, and, finally, tragedy. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Fromm Intl; 1st Fromm International ed edition (May 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0880642386
• ISBN-13: 978-0880642385
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,259,227 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The best book on theater I've read in years, July 10, 1999

By A Customer

This intense diary of one man's experience trying bring one play from his imagination to the stage is a remarkable human document. For anyone in the field, or anyone curious about how new plays are created, this book is essential -- and very pleasurable -- reading. Don't worry if you don't know the author or the play. It's actually more suspenseful if you know neither.