The Merchant of Venice |
| Theatre Film and Television Department, UC Aberystwyth , Aberystwyth Arts Centre , March 11, 2005 |
| The University of Wales, Aberystwyth, Department of Theatre Film and TV, for their annual school Shakespeare project have turned their heads to that most cantankerous of the bard’s outings, The Merchant of Venice. Whenever a production of Shakespeare’s ‘comedy’, The Merchant of Venice is staged the question as to how to treat the dramatisation of prejudice and racism inherent in the play is one that dogs it. Does one simply categorise it as a product of it’s time or a timeless story of a timeless prejudice? Is the play itself anti-semitic, or is such a question irrelevant and revisionist? As mentioned above, the play is traditionally classified as a comedy, (nobody dies at the end of it) but the comedy in the play sits uneasy with an audience member, for the subject matter is far too unpleasant for the audience to chuckle without feeling guilty afterwards. The play has two connected plots; that of Shylock and Antonio, two Merchants of Venice, and their dealings, and that of the heiress Portia and a curious condition of her father’s will, requiring all suitors to choose from one of three caskets in order to win her hand, of which the comedy of the play comes primarily from the latter. Antonio borrows money from Shylock on behalf of his friend Bassanio, to enable him to woo Portia, the collateral of which is a pound of Antonio’s flesh. Well, as the old dramatic rule goes, if there’s a gun in the first Act someone will have shot it by the end, and sure enough, Antonio is unable to pay Shylock when required. The decision to set the play in the twenties was perhaps influenced by a desire to communicate the climate of racial tension in which the play is set to a school audience, it does however ignore thousands of years of persecution in the process choosing to focus instead on the tensions in central Europe in the build up to World War II. Ed Wright as Shylock lent a maturity to his role that belied his youth. Speaking in what could have been a cumbersome Yiddish accent, Wright’s Shylock was a measured performance, that showed a man wearied by a society that had denied him his rights time and time again. In the genuinely affecting scene in which Shylock attempts to extract the pound of flesh which he’s due, the virulent animosity which is directed at his calm stoicism almost makes you wish he’d been left to get on with it. Rob Ash cuts a suitably dashing Bassanio, but it his friend Gratiano, played with camp aplomb by Daniel Price that steals his thunder. Making the transition from flighty dandy, to spitting on Shylock in the plays trial scene is not easy but Price does it seamlessly. Another standout performance was that of Heather Stevenson (Jessica). The temptation to portray Jessica as a conniving, scarlet woman is a trap many actresses fall into, but Stevenson’s Jessica seems more of a young and vulnerable Juliet figure, following her heart, and ill at ease in the gentile company she finds herself in. School children seeing this production will certainly have a lot to think about. The production, rightly, does not attempt, to answer any of the moral ambiguities that the play poses, and in doing so, doesn’t shy away from a shameful chapter in human history that many would prefer to forget. |
Reviewed by: Melissa Dunne |
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