The Stage

The Merchant of Venice

Published Friday 11 February 2011 at 15:32 by Pat Ashworth

Pete Meakin sets his Merchant in the roaring twenties heading for the Wall Street crash.

The stock exchange looks rock solid, the roulette wheel is spinning, and there’s a familiar cockiness about the dashing young men about town. In the country, the lawns are manicured, the fashions exquisite and the gramophone plays Let’s Misbehave.

But it’s religion that gives the play its pivotal moment. The demand from Antonio (George Telfer) that Shylock “presently become a Christian” has more resonance and is almost more shocking in today’s global climate than the Jew’s demand for a pound of flesh. There was never more humiliation than when the Duke’s heavy gold cross is taken off and hung around Shylock’s neck.

Paul Rider does a beautiful job with Shylock, walled up in his grim ghetto, laying out his instruments in court like a surgeon before an operation, staggering out like a blinded man under the weight of the cross. He gives the strongest performance in a cast which is not wholly at ease with itself and a production where much of the poetry has been sacrificed for something quite prosaic. The biggest casualty is Lorenzo’s hymn of love to Jessica, “How sweet the moonlight sleeps on yonder bank…”

Haz Webb has the most fun as Nerissa to Camilla Arfwedson’s very self-contained Portia, and Sam Phillips is a clear, convincing and upright Bassanio. He really does struggle not to give away Portia’s ring.