review: The Merchant of Venice

Well, the rest of the audience seemed to like the Guthrie's Merchant of Venice.

I thought the thing was grotesque, and I can sum up my reasoning in one sentence: the play left you with the impression that the Jew got what he deserved.

Now, this is the way the play would have been received during its original performances, by Shakespeare's contemporaries. Historical fact. This is not, however, the way the play should be performed now. It is possible to perform Merchant (one of my top 3 favorite Shakespeare plays) in a complex and not anti-Semitic way. When done properly, Merchant is a thought-provoking and intelligent play. The Guthrie made it...grotesque.

Shylock is a tragic, skillfully-drawn character. The Guthrie presented him as an evil buffoon, a money-grubbing caricature of a Jew. When Shylock announces that his bond for the loan is a pound of Antonio's flesh, the Guthrie played it to pull a big laugh from the audience. It was disgusting.

There were other poor directing choices as well: The Prince of Morocco, Portia's first suitor, drew a laugh when referencing his skin color--I forget the exact line. The Prince of Arragon, Portia's second suitor, is a mincing, annoying, slapstick...thing...that gets too long of a scene. Lancelot Gobbo is also portrayed in a slapstick way; his first scene, while vaguely amusing, involved too much screeching and banging-of-heads-on-tables for my liking.

Some things were good. The acting was superb; I may not approve of what the actors were doing, but the way they did it lived up to the Guthrie's well-deserved reputation. Michelle O'Neill as Portia and Sally Wingert as Nerissa were two standouts. Jim Lichtscheidl as Lancelot Gobbo also did a fantastic, if over-the-top, job. Christine Weber and Sam Bardwell (Jessica and Lorenzo) were quite frankly sweet as all heck, presenting the young lovers in a way that showed them wrapped up in their own love and impervious to the outside world. Cute.

Robert Dorfman, Shylock, did a perfectly fine job at the job he was given; I blame the director Joe Dowling for the pitfalls in Shylock's presentation. No matter how Shylock would have been perceived in the 16th century (Dowling makes note of that era's anti-Semitism in the program), you have to recognize that you are performing him for a modern audience and that some things just aren't acceptable any more. Portraying Shylock as a disgusting monster is one of those things that isn't acceptable.