The Merchant of Venice
Royal Lyceum, 22/1/2025
The Merchant of Venice, William Shakespeare, Theatre for a New Audience, Directed by Arin Arbus
What a refreshing and enjoyable presentation of one of Shakespeare’s best-known texts.
New York company ‘Theatre for a New Voice’, or TFANA, give a faithful but innovative home to Shakespeare in their multicultural city. In 2001 they were the first American group to be invited to bring a production to the Royal Shakespeare Company. They recently formed an exchange with Edinburgh’s Royal Lyceum, whose ‘Macbeth (an Undoing)’ was nominated for four awards in the Big Apple.
The themes of ‘The Merchant’ are familiar to most people. Jewish moneylender Shylock, after a lifetime of racial injustice and abuse, grasps at a chance to exact revenge. He uses the law to lay claim to a pound of flesh cut from the breast of one of his most abusive Christian business associates. In this he is thwarted by a young lady cross-dressed as a legal whizz-kid, and further brutally humiliated.
The setting is urban US, with a racially diverse cast to represent its modern multicultural relevance. Time: “in the near future”. This covers for some elements in the play which are not exactly 2025. Overt antisemitism? Ghettos? “Give it a couple of years,” as director Arin Arbus remarks in the programme.
It was the first Shakespeare play I studied at school. While I found that I’d retained much of it by heart, there were deserts in between which had drifted away. Arbus’ stripped-back ‘Merchant’ brings the text into sharp focus. The clothing is present day; discreet, conventional. The set consists of an ultra-modern outside wall with one large circular window at first floor level, avoiding bleakness with a warm tinge in the stonework. The tiered stage floor enhances the tableaux of the actors and gives extra dimension to their movements. While minimalist costumes and set give space for the dialogue to shine, the actors’ fluid body-language underscores it. It is a joy to watch, almost a choreography. Similarly, mobile facial expressions often create an entertaining surtext of characters’ private opinions. Irony is said to be deficient in the US but seems to be thriving in New York – possibly, and ironically, thanks to its Jews. The result is that many pedestrian exchanges in the text are lit with humour.
Shylock is played, superlatively, by black actor John Douglas Thompson. My companion’s initial reaction on learning this was “I’m not always comfortable with blind casting. Sophie Okonedo as Cleopatra is one thing, but this? The whole point is that Shylock is a Jew”
In fact, plenty of Jews in today’s US identify as black. And this is not random casting: TFANA specifically developed this production as a vehicle for Thompson. He had already played Othello with them and had become interested in Shakespeare’s treatment of “otherness”. His Shylock is a triumph. At first contained, remaining dignified under the routine rain of insults. As his court case collapses, and he is literally brought to his knees, his plight is all the more shocking.
‘The Merchant’ is usually classed among Shakespeare’s comedies; in fact, its’s a profoundly serious play with a few lighter moments. In this production, while the movement and even the breathing of the actors lays a comedic gloss on the text, the ethical issues are given full weight. Antonio revels in his contempt for the Jew but faces oncoming death with nobility. We not only hear of Shylock’s humiliations – “Thou didst spit upon my Jewish gabardine” –we see the saliva fly and come to understand his thirst for revenge. Portia makes her fine speech on the quality of mercy, then pursues its opposite. The moral universe spins before us.
Act V has become somewhat contentious, establishing happy-ever-afters for the triumphant Gentiles. ‘The Merchant’ was a favourite play in Nazi Germany, who saw just deserts for a villainous Jew and so relished the good fortune of his adversaries. But many productions nowadays, sympathising with the oppressed Shylock, leave Act V out altogether. TFANA have left it in, but maybe feel uncomfortable. In a short scene between Shylock’s daughter Jessica and her new Gentile husband the text suggests they are gently teasing each other, but here they seem positively angry. It left me puzzled. Perhaps it’s an attempt to dull down the gloss.
As a more fitting end to a comedy now viewed as tragic, this production has an added moment, not in Shakespeare; Shylock and Jessica come downstage in the gloom and recite a Hebrew prayer, Kol Nidre, a moving resolution.
Photo Credit: Henry Grossman