The Merchant of Venice, Edinburgh review: 'completely absorbing'
The Merchant of Venice, Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh ★★★★★
It goes without saying that The Merchant of Venice is a desperately difficult play to stage, for a 21st century audience. Torn between his fundamental creative drive to give every character a credible and persuasive human voice, and the shocking ingrained anti-semitism of the 16th century Christian culture in which he lived and wrote, the Shakespeare of this play leaves his characters stranded in a strange no-man’s-land between outward romantic comedy and bitter underlying tragedy; and the great strength of Arin Arbus’s production from the Theatre For A New Audience in New York - now at the Lyceum until 15 February - is that it embraces that empty space between worlds as its own territory, and lays Shakespeare’s play out there, with a terrific and fearless clarity.
Set in the near future - in a world of mobile phones and boozed-up men in suits where today’s broligarchs might well feel at home - Arbus’s production therefore plays out on an austere and anonymous flight of grey steps, beside what might be the towering wall of the city’s Jewish ghetto.
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Hide AdAt the centre of the drama stands John Douglas Thompson’s Shylock, a figure who carries in his words and body both the full depth of Shakeapeare’s portrayal of the Jewish moneylender - whom the Christian businessmen of Venice need to advance their early capitalist ventures, yet despise for his faith - and the wider history of racism as it bears down on black Americans, whose forebears were born into the absolute oppression of chattel slavery.


It is a remarkable performance; and its spirit of detailed attention to Shakespeare’s poetry, combined with passionate critical exploration of the questions raised by this play, also seems to lift and inspire every one of the 14 members of Arbus’s acting ensemble, from Alfredo Narciso’s haunted and haunting Antonio to Isabel Arraiza’s superb Portia, as clear-eyed, beautiful and intelligent as she is entitled, and ruthlessly prepared to defend her privilege.
What this fine ensemble delivers, over almost three hours, is a version of the play both perfect in detail - Portia’s little shudder of distaste at being wooed by the black Prince of Morocco, or impulsively hugged by Danaya Esperanza as Shylock’s daughter Jessica - and completely absorbing in the powerful arc of its storytelling. And at the end, as the whispered words of the ancient Jewish prayer of kol nidrei rise through the theatre, it is clear that wherever we are now, it is not the idealised Belmont of Shakespeare’s final scenes, as they are usually played; but somewhere much more bleak, dangerous, and covertly violent.
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