Opening Nights: Balagan, the 5th, Seattle Shakes, PNB, and the Schmee

Langs' cast is a dervish in constant motion. By turns, they're witty and witless, compassionate and utterly without pity. Mark Chamberlin nobly leads the charge of the white brigade as Antonio, the ship owner from whom Shylock will seek his pound of flesh, while Charles Leggett plays Shylock as a kind of renaissance Willy Loman, long-suffering and perseverant—a wronged man waiting for tides to turn in his favor. It's easy to see why Langs had faith that his wife would make a solid Portia; Scott is reserved and regal in all the right places, but also ably communicates a hint of well-intentioned mischief that lightens the proceedings considerably.

Resetting the show in the 1920s does nothing to help or hinder the production, but what it does do is allow the work itself to shine. There are no ruffles or flourishes, no gaudy primary colors or Puss-in-Boots getups to distract from what is clearly among the thorniest of Shakespeare's plays, an approach that renders this Merchant as transparent as the Christians' antipathy toward Shylock and as naked as Shylock's loathing for them and their strength in numbers. More than 400 years after its debut, what was unresolved and unsettling about The Merchant of Venice remains so. The quality of mercy is not strained, Shakespeare reminds us. But in this age of Bernie Madoff and sub-prime fallout, what is avarice, and where, if ever, should it intersect with mercy? KEVIN PHINNEY

PICK PNB Broadway Festival

McCaw Hall, 321 Mercer St., 441-2424, www.pnb.org. $25–$155. 7:30 p.m. Thurs., March 19–Sat., March 21, 1 p.m. Sun., March 22.

Pacific Northwest Ballet artistic director Peter Boal has said repeatedly that he wants to bring modern dance, breakdance, and acrobatics into the company's repertory. But it's perhaps no surprise that the most successful part of PNB's current Broadway-themed program is the most traditional.

Carousel (A Dance), which premiered in New York in 2002, uses some recognizable tunes from the 1945 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, and makes a few references to the main characters, but is really more of a neoclassical ballet than anything else. Christopher Wheeldon's choreography is deftly crafted, especially in the central duet. There's a hint of Billy Bigelow, the show's carnival barker, in the partnering: The man is more aggressive than courtly, which translates into some heavily accented lifts. It's his interest in expanding ballet, rather than grafting other things onto it, that makes Wheeldon almost an endangered species as a choreographer. This is his third work for the PNB repertory, with another coming in June, an example of very smart shopping on Boal's part.

By contrast, George Balanchine's Slaughter on Tenth Avenue feels lightweight and showbizzy. When he first came to America, Balanchine had a brief but fruitful career on Broadway. His Slaughter, from Rodgers and Hart's On Your Toes, could be a lighthearted take on Romeo and Juliet, with a sweet-hearted stripper and a lovelorn tap dancer as the starcrossed lovers. First staged as an independent work 40 years ago, it's a charming cartoon and a cheerful opening act.

Broadway director and choreographer Susan Stroman made Take Five...More or Less last year for PNB's "Laugh Out Loud" festival, and it still gets laughs. She sketches a handful of characters quickly—a lovelorn girl, a vamp, a dreamer, a trio of devoted chorus boys—moving them easily over the top of Dave Brubeck's familiar rhythmic tricks. Like Slaughter, its appeal is in its breezy caricatures and romp-in-the-park physicality, but in the middle of this program it's perhaps one piece of light entertainment too many.

Boal gives the final slot to a suite of West Side Story dances that Jerome Robbins first put together in 1995. Oddly, Robbins chose to finish this version with "Somewhere," leaving out the final twist. For the majority of people in the audience who grew up with the film, or performed in their high school's production, it's a curiously awkward conclusion. The PNB cast sings and dances with the intense sincerity of those high-school productions, but they finish in an open field rather than a gritty empty lot. They are indeed "Somewhere"—though not quite where we expect. SANDRA KURTZ

PICK When the Messenger Is Hot

Theater Schmeater, 1500 Summit Ave., 324-5801, www.schmeater.org. $15–$21. 8 p.m. Thurs.–Sat. Ends April 11.

Narcissistic moms cast loooong shadows. Aspiring writer Josie is so enthralled by hers that she wills Mom back to life after her death from lung cancer. Why should this diva die by life's rules, when she didn't live by them? In Laura Eason's Steppenwolf-forged play (based on the 2004 book of short stories by Elizabeth Crane), the 30-something Josie seeks love in all the wrong places while communicating with Mom, whom she remains desperate to please.

Eason shrewdly splits Josie into three actresses, which mitigates the "all-about-me" orientation of the text. At first the multiple "selves" gimmick grates, but as context develops and the actresses take ownership of distinct character nuances, it pays off. Josie's grief over Mom is painful and at times melodramatic, but the parallel elements of her amusingly hopeful and doomed love life leaven the dough. As Mom, Karen Nelsen blends profanity and pretense, narrowly avoiding a cliché of eccentricity. Frank Lawler does wide-ranging yeoman's work as nearly every male character, from crass playboy to gay best friend to quiet stranger who dances affectingly with Josie 1 (Marty Mukhalian) at her loneliest moment.