The Merchant of Venice

Word is slowly getting around about the Ten Thousand Things company, which is best known for playing prisons and halfway houses. By reducing layers of artifice to the simplest costumes and rudimentary props and using only the best actors in town, this troupe has proven its knack for tapping into the emotional core of classical texts. That’s the sort of theater many of us “on the outside” are also hungry for, so the company has been adding a smattering of public performances to its schedule of late. In producing Shakespeare’s play about gambling for love, Ten Thousand Things has rounded up a cast that includes company veteran Steve Hendrickson as Shylock the Jew and Stacia Rice—recently christened a “curtain-call cutie” by another local magazine—as the lovely heiress, Portia. 612-203-9502; www.tenthousandthings.org