The Merchant of Venice currently showing at the Downstairs Belvoir is possibly Shakespeare’s most didactic play. The Director, Tanya Goldberg,
describes it in her notes as ambivalent and unresolved. It’s also the
one where the subplot, in most people’s minds, eclipses the principle
one.
When considering the play however it is well to remember the context of the time. Shakespeare
unashamedly wrote for his audience and he was uncompromisingly
political in his ‘entertainments’. Most Elizabethan playgoers wouldn’t
have made it to Dover let alone Venice, Queen Bess was still on the
throne and the war chests, as so frequently was the case in merry
England, were sadly depleted. Raleigh had just passed on, and
colonization of Virginia, the great hope for a sustainable future had
stalled and, yes, Jews were still forbidden entry to the hallowed isle. Like
Marlowe’s earlier ‘The Jew of Malta’ this was to have been something of
a public ‘mea culpa’ to the much needed ‘bondsmen’ of the day, the
children of Abraham. It seems it has ever been thus, banks rule in war
and peace. The idea, it seems, is that by humanizing the demon you’ll
get rid of the resentment.
The main plot of the Merchant, like so many of Will’s
comedies is about deception in appearances, the comedy of errors.
There’s no prize for guessing why the women mostly come out of the
scrapes looking smarter than their swashbuckling counterparts. The Merchant is no exception.
In
this production however the ‘doubles’ are more evident than the
original text probably ever had in mind. For a start there is no
Shylock and instead almost everyone gets to have a go at him, which may
well have been how he would have seen it at the time had he been
present. While it became rather disconcerting to have the actor jumping
back into the ‘crystal’ chair to take the role it nevertheless worked
surprisingly well in the trial when the merchant, Antonio, played by Nathan Lovejoy became his own prosecutor.
The combination of the dual roles of Morocco and Arragon, taken by Richard Gyoerffy, was generally less successful despite a bold attempt at differentiating the characters assigned.
Basically
the play is about how a good woman can catch her man and avoid
unpleasant mistakes along the way. A side observation is that while men
might seem like cads they’re really just big kids at heart. Boys, after
all, will be boys.
Just
how Shylock makes out in this production is something that has to be
mined individually. Understandably it has a rather Hebraic spin to it.
Anna Houston’sPortia
was every bit as described in the notes, a ‘liberated, intelligent and
powerful woman’ but probably she could have afforded to be less so at
least some of the time, it is after all a very intimate space.
Of exceptional note in what was a very energetic if somewhat uneven production was the performance of Ryan Hayward
as Bassanio, with a lick of Shylock - well, whose delivery of the text
was sheer music. Moderated and modulated it carried a truth and
understanding that was consistent throughout. Eve Morey, too, delivered a very sensitive Nerrisa.
As a whole the play proved very engrossing and there probably can be no higher commendation.
Ride On in association with B Sharp presents THE MERCHANT OF VENICE by William Shakespeare
VENUE: Belvoir St Downstairs Theatre, 25 Belvoir Street, Surry Hills DATES:
30 June - 15 July, 2007 TIMES:
Tues 7pm, Weds-Sat 8.15pm, Sun 5.15pm TICKETS:
$29/$23 (preview $20, Cheap Tues pay-what-you-can, min. $10) BOOKINGS:
9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au
Marlowe's The Jew of Malta as a mea culpa to Jewish bondsmen? What nonsense.
Sure, the Christians in Marlowe's play are for the greater part revealed to be venal hypocrites, engaged as they are in the slave-trade that has attracted the fiscally driven Barabas, the Jew of the title but not the only one of the play. Barabas, however, goes on to outdo them all in sheer terribleness and that is part of the point and denouement of the play.
Barabas is one of Elizabethan drama’s most murderous and devious characters: part of the theatrical DNA that went on to spawn Shakespeare's great villains. He happily boasts of late-night murders, of training as a doctor in order to kill more effectively, of poisoning wells and multiple other crimes largely in sync with anti-Semitic fantasies of the time (or current fantasies if one lives in modern Iran). And lest we think it all an ironic biographic confection on the part of Barabas, other Jews in the play are revealed to be similarly murderous and Barabas himself goes on to poison an entire nunnery. (Now that's commitment!)
Neither Barabas nor the play from which he is summoned can in any honest account be represented as anything resembling an apology to a people heaped with scorn. The more dangerous (at their time as perhaps it is again in our own) and interesting motor at the play's heart is Marlowe's scorn for all religious tribes.
Odd that this show was happy to use the racist sterio-types of the wog and the English upper class prig while attempting to make a examine/critique racism - and then underplayed another prejudice, homophobia, by minimising its presence within the play. An interesting production but a little confused.
The Merchant of Venice currently showing at the Downstairs Belvoir is possibly Shakespeare’s most didactic play. The Director, Tanya Goldberg,
describes it in her notes as ambivalent and unresolved. It’s also the
one where the subplot, in most people’s minds, eclipses the principle
one.
