Merchant of Venice is a Dud

This Merchant is a strain on our patience

Jun 02, 2007 04:30 AM
Richard Ouzounian
Toronto Sar
Theatre Critic

STRATFORD–There may have been worse productions of The Merchant of Venice than that which opened at the Festival Theatre last night, but it would be hard to imagine it. Mercifully, there have certainly been far better ones.

But Richard Rose's perversely pretentious examination of Shakespeare's play is the hands-down winner in one category: it's clearly the emptiest version I have ever witnessed.

Granted, the script itself is a difficult piece of goods, combining a series of dewy romances with a distastefully anti-Semitic revenge plot. One would hope Rose might have found a new way to make it all hang together, but he doesn't.

Instead, he goes in for a whole series of post-modern anything-for-a-laugh gimmicks and a series of heavy-handed religious symbols. You don't emerge with any new insights, just a lot of trendy directorial ideas that don't go anywhere.

The merchant of the title, Antonio, loans his friend Bassiano 3,000 ducats to woo the heiress Portia. But first he has to borrow the cash from the Jewish money-lender Shylock who asks for a pound of Antonio's flesh if the bond is forfeit.

This sets in motion a complex story of greed and retribution in which everyone proves themselves – at one point or another – to be less than admirable human beings.

Rose seems intent on painting Antonio as a Christ figure, beginning the action with a sacrilegious last supper, then has him scattering the merchants in the temple and, finally, forces him to be held down by three ropes in a parody of the crucifixion as Shylock attempts to exact his revenge.

But what does this mean? Rose never tells us, although Scott Wentworth's merchant suffers nobly and manages to avoid the strident overacting that the director has forced so many of his cast into.

In vain, we look to Shylock for a clue, but Graham Greene, making his Stratford debut, offers us very little to go on. He looks dour, shouts occasionally and sometimes sneers mockingly at his tormentors. That's it. There's no subtlety, no power.

It's also actually somewhat disturbing that Greene delivers the crucial outburst beginning "Hath not a Jew eyes?" with less passion than his subsequent rant over the jewels his daughter has stolen from him.

The rest of the cast clutch onto whatever shreds of meaning they can, while Rose's bizarre ideas swirl around them.

Sean Arbuckle survives nicely by playing Bassiano as though he were in a more conventional production of the play, but Severn Thompson's Portia is too giddy in the romantic scenes and too lightweight in the courtroom (where Rose perversely has her read the famous "quality of mercy" speech from a piece of paper, instead of supposedly improvising it on the spot).

Raquel Duffy is a spunky Nerissa and Gareth Potter a cheeky Gratiano, but it's small compensation for an evening that tries to say so much and winds up saying so little.

The quality of mercy may not be strained by this production, but our patience certainly is.


KW RECORD

The Merchant of Venice that opened Friday at Stratford's Festival Theatre is a production of missed opportunity.

Director Richard Rose, who has an uneven track record over 10 festival seasons, is soundly defeated by one of Shakespeare's most problematic and controversial dramas.

Rose's vapid reading is matched by a cast of one-dimensional performances that collectively tread water, only to drown with nary a life buoy in sight.

Taking his cue from the play's mercantile themes, Rose sets the production in an unspecified contemporary world of market-driven, bond-trading, ball-busting globalization.

However, he doesn't seem fully committed to developing his interpretation.

Again taking his cue from the play, he toys with the religious conflict between Gentile and Jew that has ignited such vehement controversy in our post-Holocaust age.

However, his approach is vulgarly satirical, as when he opens the production with a Last Supper pig roast, animated by blatant homoeroticism.

It's not so much that Rose misinterprets. Rather, his fetishistic excesses distort and misrepresent, quickly wearing thin and becoming tiresome.

The production's creative designers exacerbate problems that originate with Rose's direction.

The art deco-futuristic set, co-designed by Gillian Gallow and Douglas Paraschuk from Graeme S. Thomson's original concept, is cold and metallic.

Phillip Clarkson's costumes are perplexing without being interesting. Why, for example, does Antonio wear three ties and two suit coats in the opening scene?

Rose is strapped with a cast that, with few exceptions, is too young and too inexperienced.

The only actor who maintains our interest is the always dependable Scott Wentworth as Antonio. The problem lies in Rose's misguided notion that the merchant of the title is a persecuted Christ figure.

Severn Thompson is acceptable as a giggling Portia in search of a suitor by means of the three-caskets parlour game. However, she just isn't up to the Portia who enters the courtroom to save Antonia's pound of flesh and humiliate Shylock.

The less said about the remaining cast the better.

Sean Arbuckle's Bassanio is a limp-wristed piece of work, while Gareth Potter is one long, tiresome sneer as Bassanio.

It's impossible to care for either Jean-Michel Le Gal's Lorenzo or Sara Topham's Jessica.

Given the odds, it's not surprising Graham Greene's Shylock is disappointing.

He seems lost more than out of his depth in a role that exceeds the bounds of what is essentially a romantic comedy with a powerfully dark sub-plot that steals the show.

Greene's Shylock is neither the spiteful villain of the ghetto nor the noble, suffering man. He huffs and he puffs, but it's hot wind with neither force nor direction.

Shylock slips through the fingers of the Grammy-nominated actor who was compelling as Kicking Bird in Dances With Wolves.

I felt for Greene in his festival debut. Actors who come to Stratford with such cinematic baggage are always placed under the microscope.

Moreover, I couldn't help speculate about the production that might have been -- the missed opportunity.

It's unfair to evaluate a production by what it does not set out to be.

However, the temptation is too great for the reason that Greene undoubtedly chose to play Shylock -- because the play speaks to him in some way.

For a moment, contemplate Dudley George and Shylock, the Ipperwash inquiry and The Merchant of Venice.

What could an inquiry into the death of an aboriginal protester in Ontario 11 years ago possibly have to do with a play written by William Shakespeare in the late 16th century?

Nothing. And everything.

Think for a moment about the evocative themes that reverberate between the romantic comedy and George's tragic death.

Conflict between the dominant social order and the outsider.

Prejudice and bigotry.

Broken agreements and judicial proceedings.

Persecution and martyrdom.

Is it not possible to view Shylock's forced conversion to Christianity as comparable to forcing aboriginals into residential schools, depriving them of their language and religion?

When Shylock is forced to forfeit his property, does it not suggest parallels between the expropriation of native artifacts sold to museums around the world after European contact?

Then there's the whole contentious issue of land claims.

I'm not advocating turning Shylock into a North Amerindian. However, common themes could have been explored as we enter what might well become a summer of discontent between natives and non-natives.

That would have given Greene something to sink his teeth into. And it would have given audiences something interesting to chew on.

I suspect Greene chose to play Shylock in the first place because he identifies -- either personally or symbolically -- with the persecuted moneylender.