Merchant of Venice – London, Richard

We saw The Merchant of Venice in the San Wanamaker Playhouse, beside the Globe Theatre in London. It is an indoor globe also made entirely of carved old oak. 

This production was quite different from Shakespeare’s original script. Scenes were rearranged into a different order than Shakespeare wrote them. The director brought out Jessica’s part more strongly, with Antonio‘s role more in the background. The play would describe itself better with the name “Shylock’s Daughter” than “The Merchant”.  In my opinion, it had a movie feeling in the way that it was multilayered, and the actors looked like they were having a lot of fun with their interpretation.

Before the play had begun, we were inside the claustrophobic theatre, and I was inspecting the ominous decoration of the ceiling. There were innocent paintings of angels flying inside a ring- shaped cloud. In the middle was a Sun yolk with a face holding a monotone expression, above and behind it a painting of an extravagant female angel, with a bow and a sword held on each hand. (For some unknown reason, I couldn’t see any arrows to shoot.) The air was fairly warm and was stuffy from the squeeze and crowd of people. After a short time, with the crowd chattering loudly, came a shock of music trying to take over the gossip of the people. After a few bars of music came the dimming of artificial light, leaving only the candles to shine. This meant that the play was about to start.

The four candles that were floating only slightly above the ground rose up slowly, and then the play started for real. The first thing they presented was Jessica singing a song about having fun that night, and then some drunken Christian men wearing masks appeared, prancing around and shouting like dirty little boys. It was a scene of a bawdy party. I was suprised by how different it was. Next came Lancelot uttering his skeptical lines about pursuing the idea of leaving serving Shylock, the Jew(which, originally, you would not see until Act 2). The drunken men shouted loudly  “Jew!” every time Lancelot sounded the same word, and they pushed the poor servant around, making him drink more alcohol. This change was shocking to the audience, opposing their original expectations of the play.

Following that, the next scene, they started the real beginning of the Merchant of Venice that I know from the text. But even here there were differences. Instead of Antonio being portrayed as a miserable person, he is displayed as a more forceful, drunken, insistent and unpleasant fellow, pushing his friends around. After they annoyed Antonio constantly, listing possible reasons for his sadness that were plainly, to Antonio, false, they left him with Gratiano and Basssanio.  Gratanio continued philosophising matters of why Antonio was sad. (Although to me, as I said, he appeared more annoyed than sad). Eventually Antonio was left bored by them all, coiled up in a corner, ignoring Gratiano, waiting for when he would depart. Like other productions, Antonio spits and scolds Shylock in Act 1 scene 3. As we can see, we feel our hate growing for Antonio and our sympathy growing for Shylock. 

Portia is still portrayed as an immature and hedonistic young woman, very childish. (Some other versions of the play do this especially in her relationship with Nerrisa.) But unlike all the other versions I have seen of ‘The Merchant of Venice’, Portia seems to be in something like an Indian trance. This was a surprise to me as my feeling about her is of a highly intelligent and compétant woman but trapped by her circumstance.

Perhaps that is enough to give you a flavour for this interpretation and my feelings about it. I did enjoy it very much and found it such a new wonder to experience in London. It was a big surprise to see all the differences with the original though. I thought it brought out a new way of seeing the play, so I didn’t mind. It was a pity that Antonio was shown as only a bawdy racist cumudgeon though. I think he should be more complicated, both good and bad.