BWW Reviews: THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, Almeida Theatre, December 15 2014

On the journey home, I read the programme (one of the best I've ever seen) and tried to process the torrent of images, words and ideas that flooded forth in Rupert Goold's extraordinary The Merchant of Venice (continuing at the Almeida Theatre until 14 February). The erudite articles didn't really help and, almost 24 hours on, I'm still not sure what to think - and maybe that's the intention.

We're in the Belmont Casino in Las Vegas where Portia (think Dallas's Lucy Ewing: pouty, blondy and drawly) is selecting a husband. Following her father's wishes, the lucky man will be identified by his choice of one of three caskets engraved with riddles, one of which holds Portia's image and her hand in marriage. Naturally, it's all covered live on Reality TV. Enter The Prince of Morocco (or is it Floyd "Money" Mayweather?), who fails. Enter The Prince of Aragon (or is it Julio Iglesias?), who fails. Enter her beau, Bassanio - who succeeds! But the flighty young man has borrowed money from loan shark Shylock who has extracted a bond from Bassanio's friend (and would-be lover - maybe?) Antonio to indemnify his risk. And then the trouble starts.

The setting works perfectly - The Strip (home to The Venetian Hotel with its real gondolas in the desert) is where all that glisters is most definitely not gold and where plenty of promises have been enforced with flesh. In Vegas, money talks and bullshit walks more than anywhere on the planet - heroes become zeroes on a roll of the dice; you are never more and never less than the height of your chip stack; magicians make tigers appear and disappear at will. Everyone knows the deal and, once there, you consent to its considerable pros and its fearful cons.

Shylock knows that and knows that this Venetian Vegas relies on the sanctity of the transaction more than all its Elvis impersonators (and there's one in the show) and conjurors. So he is entitled to be bemused when his contract for Antonio's pound of flesh is suddenly required to be leavened by the quality of (Christian) mercy. You can't put mercy on Red; you can't bluff with mercy; you can't, unlike the exact quantum of Antonio's flesh to which he is entitled, weigh mercy. But Shylock is a Jew.

Tom Scutt's spectacular design might drown some actors, but not these. Susannah Fielding (Portia) and Emily Plumtree (Nerissa) are as annoyingly facile when playing the schmucks for laughs in the "Destiny" casket choice gameshow as they are coldbloodly focused when in disguise as lawyers in the Duke's court, playing Shylock for a fool. Tom Weston-Jones looks boybandishly dishy as Bossanio, quite enough to attract Scott Handy's messianic Antonio, should he swing that way - and Portia certainly thinks that he probably does. They get plenty of excellent support, in which Jamie Beamish stands out as Lancelet, a compulsive Elvis impersonator, whose shoes you would be advised to avoid stepping on.

But I've dodged the main idea, the problem, the jar, jar jarring in the brain as the play progresses. Ian McDiarmid gives Shylock the kind of caricature Jewish accent I can remember from the dying days of Northern Working Men's Club comics on 70s TV. Not that it matters whether one considers that accent anachronistic or not, because Shylock is relentlessly referred to as "The Jew". It's as if the totality of his personality can be captured by the stereotype Jew - feared for his otherness, his ruthlessness, his deviousness. Though McDiarmid invests Shylock with all the humanity of the famous speech that demands us to consider whether he bleeds as does a Gentile, the reduction of a man, of a people, to a three letter word, more often than not spat out from the side of the mouth rather than spoken is shocking. No wonder the Nazis liked this Shakespeare. Sure Shylock is cruel, but is this not a man? It's hard to take.

Perhaps that is the triumph of this production. It shirks not Shylock and demands that we confront the words as Shakespeare wrote them. The ambiguity is unresolved and I know that I must return again to the play in the future, when I won't expect to find an answer, but I will expect to learn a little more. In the meantime, this blazing production has fired my imagination and, whether a first-timer to this play like me, or an old-timer well into double figures, you will find plenty to admire and much on which to ponder.

Photo Ellie Kurttz.

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