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The Merchant of Venice

 
Stephanie Green Review by Stephanie Green 4 Published: 23 Jan 2025 Lyceum Theatre Show Dates: 18 Jan 2025-15 Feb 2025

At times deeply shocking, sugar-coated with goofy humour, this is an extraordinary must-see production of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, relevant to our dark times so filled with hatred, in particular racism and religious intolerance but also critiquing justice and capitalism. Directed by Arin Arbus of New York’s Theatre for a New Audience, a mutli-racial and ethnic company, Shylock is played by John Douglas Thompson, a Black actor, emphasising the similarities between anti-semitism and racism against people of colour. Set in the near future, this is a Venice more like an American dystopia with a concrete Brutalist set, contemporary grey suits and mobile phones, where street culture meets ‘For sooth.’

Extraordinary must-see... relevant to our dark times so filled with hatred

Shylock’s cruel bond, a pound of flesh for a defaulted loan, if enacted will inevitably kill Antonio. Revenge indeed. The racist abuse that has led to Shylock’s attitude is cleverly referred to in throwaway asides, rather than major scenes, such as references to a hypocritical Christian society who treats him ‘like your asses and your dogs and mules’ emphasised by the cast continually spitting on Shylock so that we have sympathy for him. Yet it is Shakespeare’s genius to make Shylock a flawed man. The tragedy being that in his insistence on getting his bond, he loses his own humanity. The shock of Shylock’s treatment in the court scene is so visceral his faults are forgiven, not least by Thompson’s outstanding performance.

With dignity, grace and a gravelly voice, Thompson elevates what is frankly not one of Shakespeare’s best plays with its ramshackle structure and unconvincing folktale-like casket scene, into a deeply humane portrait of Shylock. Thompson speaks his lines as if thinking aloud, so the audience can follow as if he is speaking English as comprehensible as that of today, not just iambic pentameter.

Not all the cast have this facility, even Portia (Isabel Arraiza) is rather affectless in the first act but comes alive as the doctor of law, Balthazar, in the court scene and the famous ‘quality of mercy’ speech. The bit parts are hilarious, enlivened by caricature New York street swagger, high fives, ironic facial expressions with enough basic non-verbal humour to please our modern day ‘groundlings’ going by the whoops from the audience. What a joy to actually find Shakespeare’s comic characters funny when so often the humour passes us by. Particularly memorable are a drunken Gratiano (Haynes Thigpen) and Lancelet Gobbo (Matthew Saldívar).

Rather confusing is Ariel Shafir’s interpretation of Bassanio in a similar style, all ironic facial tics but no clear emotional reactions. Purists will point out that the gay overtones of his and Antonio’s relationship is not suggested in the text - overt friendships between men were common in Shakespeare’s time. Perhaps this explains Shafir’s ambivalent performance.

Other issues are a gratuitous abusive sex scene between Lorenzo and Jessica, a flagrant distortion of the original where Jessica has chosen the man she wants to marry (unlike Portia who must obey her father’s wishes) and there is a happily ever after marriage. But these are quibbles. Twists or additional material themselves can be hugely successful as is the chanting of the Kol Nidre, the Jewish Prayer on the Day of Atonement, with which Ms Arbus ends the play, underlining the sad breach in Shylock and his daughter’s relationship.

A modern playwright would probably have ended the play after the court scene. The sub-plots that follow need resolving but are a little tedious. However, Thompson’s portrayal of Shylock’s humiliation and his abject exit will stay with you and more than compensates. This is a moment you won’t forget and leaves you with much to ponder on.

Amir Nisi

Stephanie Green

Stephanie Green has reviewed Theatre and Dance in Edinburgh since 2011 but previously travelled widely, mainly in Eastern Europe and Russia, writing about puppetry. She also studied shadow puppetry and sacred dance in Bali. In the 1970s, she trained as a puppeteer at the Little Angel, London and later worked at the alternative In the Heart of the Beast Mask and Puppet Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S.A. After training at the Place, the London School of Contemporary Dance, in her 20s she then gave up dancing until starting again in her 60s just for fun. She has recently danced in a community group with Barrowland Ballet (at the Edinburgh Fringe, 2013), Oceanallover and at the South Bank, London as part of the Festival of the Silver Age. She is also a novelist, playwright and poet. www.stephaniegreen.org.uk/

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The Blurb:

The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh presents the Theatre for a New Audience production of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, featuring John Douglas Thompson as Shylock, directed by Arin Arbus.

Shakespeare’s perennially contested play about corrosive bigotry and blinding vengeance is poised at the radioactive intersection of race, class and religion in Arin Arbus’s production.

As Arbus observes, “The Merchant of Venice depicts a divided society saturated with hate and inequity. The world boils with anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, classism, and homophobia.”

The show’s uniquely diverse company evoke a deeply stratified Venice. Its connections to our own grievously fractured world are vivid, stark and startling.

The Shakespeare Exchange

The Shakespeare Exchange is the exchange of two productions between Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, and Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA), New York. In the spring of 2024, The Lyceum’s Macbeth (an undoing), written and directed by Zinnie Harris, after William Shakespeare, played at Polonsky Shakespeare Center, TFANA’s home. In winter 2025, TFANA’s The Merchant of Venice will play at The Lyceum.John Douglas Thompson as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, directed by Arin Arbus. Photo by Henry Grossman.

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