THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
Shakespeare's Globe, London SE1
Opened 28 June, 2007
***
Rebecca Gatward's production was beginning to look jinxed. First,
Gatward lost her Portia during the show's preview run, resulting in its
press night being postponed for a fortnight. Then, when it finally did
open, a rather sheepish Globe artistic director Dominic Dromgoole came
onstage after a protracted interval to explain that Gratiano had come
down with something gastric and would be replaced for the second half.
To an extent, then, the following judgements are provisional.
Nevertheless, my principal apprehensions proved groundless. I had been
worried that the Globe audience, which is known to enjoy a laugh at
every opportunity and many that aren't meant to be, might respond too
frivolously to what is today the uneasiest of Shakespeare's plays (even
though it is classed as a comedy). Gatward and her cast, however,
shepherd our amusement into the proper areas, so that none taints the
treatment of Shylock the Jewish moneylender. An impersonation of
Shylock by a minor character is all oy-vey Jewishness, but there is no
scintilla of ostentatious Hebraism in John McEnery's performance in the
role itself. A straggling beard and a difference in costume ("Jewish
gaberdene" instead of odd, hybrid, pinstripe Jacobean gowns) are all
that distinguish Shylock from the Gentile businessmen in this Venice.
Nor does McEnery play Shylock as villainous. His "Hath not a Jew
eyes?..." speech is born of an honest vexation rather than either
palpable malice or its modish alternative, noble suffering at the hands
of an anti-Semitic Venetian community. The murderous nature of the
contract he offers Antonio seems driven specifically by the latter's
persecution of him, particularly as the pound-of-flesh condition is
only introduced at the end of a scene in which Dale Rapley's Antonio,
always morose, bursts into pathological hatred of Shylock. Even in the
trial scene, once the tide has turned and Shylock's earlier exaltation
of the young lawyer Balthazar (alias the disguised Portia) is flung
back in his face by a crowing Gratiano, the mockery seems personal
rather than sectarian. Whether this all amounts to defusing the problem
of anti-Semitism or to glossing over it is a moot point.
Philip Cumbus plays Bassanio as disquietingly aware of his appeal to
both sexes. He seems deliberately to play on Antonio's feelings for him
in order to secure the latter's agreement to stand surety, even kissing
him hard on the mouth once consent has been obtained. And yet Antonio
knows that the money is to sustain Bassanio's suit toward Portia.
There, too, when he succeeds in solving the riddle of the three caskets
(or just guesses lucky) in order to win Portia's hand, he positively
preens. As his friend Gratiano, Mark Rice-Oxley played him with exactly
the right amount of comic-sidekick verve, before illness struck and he
was replaced by an unrehearsed but even more energetic Craig Gazey
(doubling from his usual role as Launcelot Gobbo). I cannot imagine
that original Portia Michelle Duncan could have bettered her successor
Kirsty Besterman, who finds an appealing blend of gravity and
girlishness to suit all dramatic weathers.
But I do wish the Globe would give over its policy of ending all
productions with a dance by the cast. Really, seeing Shylock return to
cut a merry little caper is nearly as ludicrous as the other spectacle
this season of Othello and Desdemona rising from the dead and cavorting
with each other. Still, this routine does provide a novel solution to
the problem of the melancholy, un-paired-off and probably gay Antonio:
Gatward couples him with a drag-queen courtesan.
Written for the Financial Times.
Copyright © Ian Shuttleworth; all rights
reserved.
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