Description
The Merchant of Venice 1936
Touring, (currently at Malvern Theatre)
By ROSHAN DOUG
Not since 1945 have anti-Semitism, Zionism, and the Israeli/Palestine conflict been so predominant and divisive as they are today. As such, The Merchant of Venice 1939 is deeply apt and timely.
Directed by Brigid Larmour, the production encapsulates the dangers of global fascism whilst at the same time providing a localised prism through which to see the toxic intolerance and hatred of otherness.
Set in the decadent, Edwardian period of the 1930s upper class Britain – with lavish dresses, cricket jumpers, cravats and double breasted suits – it has a strange echoes of Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited. However, with words and images of Oswald Mosley, the Blackshirts, and the Union Jack as the backdrop, we see a dark, sinister side to the roots that subsequently gave rise to the horrors that engulfed Europe.
Led (and Co-adapted) by Tracy-Ann Oberman, this is a pleasing, relatively innocuous and inoffensive piece of work.
Oberman does a fine job as the hateful, money lender Shylock, hell-bent on drawing her bond of extracting a pound of flesh from Antonio. She delivers an excellent, riveting performance that is insightful and intelligent. She plays Shylock without resorting to hyperbolic gestures, language or intonation but with just the right degree of both contemptibility and sympathy. She does a commendable balancing act of making us wonder whether Shylock is ‘as an inhuman wretch/incapable of pity’ or a victim of a certain kind prejudice and injustice.
The production (currently on tour) doesn’t pull many punches nor does it offer a particularly radical interpretation of Shakespeare’s work. Apart from shortening the text and changing Shylock into a female character – a formidable, domineering Jewish woman who harbours all the resentment of her people against the Christians – the play remains faithful to the original Elizabethan story, which is all well and good. Oberman even pulls off the crude Jewish accent without drawing too much attention to what she might be accused of.
However, there some nuances – albeit, not very overt – suggesting that Bassiano (Gavin Fowler) and Antonio are gay whilst Lancelot Gobbo becomes a female Mary Gobbo (Jessica Dennis). Though a tad irritating, it doesn’t distract us from the plot nor do Antonio (Raymond Coulthard) and Portia (Hannah Moorish) being played by mature actors at odds with characters who are supposed to be naïve – someone with an unflinching belief in mercantile business, and a very young woman as a suitor respectively. The ending is also questionable. Everyone in the audience is compelled to stand and form a protest taking place on stage, whilst Shylock provides a short didactic speech. It seems like a piece taken from agitprop theatre, and its function here appears just as crude and abhorrent as witnessing someone extracting a pound of flesh.
Perhaps this is just nit-picking.
All in all, this production is certainly a tale for our times and thus, well worth seeing.
Rating: **** (four stars)
