Money man Colonial Theatre’s meaty Merchant BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	Heavy breathing Unexpected is the right word. There in the humble little Warwick Museum of Art, surrounded by a display of children’s paintings, is a talented young troupe that calls itself the Unexpected Company and performs Sunday night improv comedy shows that, judging by a recent evening, are quite a hoot. The action zipped all over the map, from a soap factory to Neverland, as though a school bus for a bunch of attention-deficit kids had been hijacked by Merry Pranksters with their own idea of what constitutes a good trip. That is to say, the brief, skit-like improv you might be used to, where audience members constantly interrupt and change the performers’ direction, has been replaced by two 45-minute routines. The actors and the audiences are in for the long haul. Fortunately, what could be slow rides ended up being a couple of delightful romps. The Unexpected Company employs a long form of improv that founder Tim Hillman has devised. It’s called the Morris, which is not to be confused with English Morris Dancing, which is also pretty funny but unintentionally so. (It could, however, be easily confused with the Harold, the original long form invented by late improvisation guru Del Close, of Chicago’s The Second City. See above for more.) On a slightly raised platform are a couple of lime-green folding chairs and a collapsible serving table. Out steps Hillman, a bearded guy considerably older than the twentysomethings you have seen scampering about behind the scenes. He makes his sales pitch for the Morris, probably to the dismay of former MTV addicts who paid their five bucks and were expecting something along the finger-snapping lines of Sesame Street with raunchy wisecracks. Nope, he explains. The audience will make suggestions for a theme and the troupe will run with it for the duration. God help us all, he doesn’t say, if they pick something boring. So out trots the first team. Four guys and one young woman, of various sizes and shapes. The audience is asked to suggest something they wish they’d invented. A simple request, but here’s where the pros and the amateurs are sorted out — a guy in the audience suggests sex and has to be informed that this was not an invention but a discovery. Shrugging off sex and the bobblehead doll and settling on the invention of the toothbrush, the troupe is off and running. Matt Archambault starts off as a lifeguard with bad breath. (Not much more is done with the toothbrush motif, but the audience continues to chuckle anyway.) Zack Geoffroy, lying on the floor and applying sunblock, takes offense at him laughing and is informed that he is at an indoor swimming pool. And so it goes, as the players gleefully mess with one another’s minds, pulling fast ones like that or switching scenes completely or registering a surprise that lurches the storyline in an entirely new direction. For example, a baby that two garbagemen in the next scene find in a trash can grows up to own a soap factory, since his origins gave him an obsession with cleanliness. Some of their most inventive turns were not for the squeamish. For example, when Victoria Gillette suggests to her boyfriend that they go clubbing, Eric Harrington takes her to do in some baby seals. "That’s horrible!" she shrieks. "No it’s not," he replies. "There are too many of them." You get the idea. Theme and variation, heavy on the variation, extra points for cleverness. Toward the end of the first team’s shenanigans, the problem of evil in the world is eliminated when God gives Satan a nice, long hug. But the real payoff is when Andrew Mendillo is later told he’s going to Hell and he remembers to retort, "Well, is that such a bad thing any more?" And that was just the first half of the show. In the second, quick thinking continued. After stopping an underage video store customer from renting some porn, Brian Perry is asked if he’d get in the way of a customer who liked to watch cars crash. Of course not, he replies without missing a beat, he could get killed that way. Later, Jordan Eastwood was a very funny pixie-dust-pushing Tinkerbell, and Frank Fusaro was uproarious with his riff on obsession with Steven Spielberg’s Hook — coming back to it time and again with fresh takes, as obsessives do. Not everything was unimprovable, of course. There was only one woman in the cast of 10. Both routines resorted to therapy sessions, although they were handled differently. Needless to say, not every bit achieved its knee-slapping aspiration, not every actor was as funny as the next or managed to never drop the metaphorical ball tossed to him. But the pace tended to stay brisk, what with the Morris allowing an actor to step out and change the scene at will. Unexpected Company is a breath of fresh air, so let’s hope they keep up their heavy breathing for a long time to come. – B.R.

It’s difficult to not be conflicted watching The Merchant of Venice. The play contains some of the Bard’s better writing, but the story can be taken in either as an appeal for tolerance or as a groundlings-appeasing anti-Semitic screed. Our call.

However the balance might tip for you, this Wilcox Park summer Shakespeare production by Colonial Theatre is an enjoyable evening under the Westerly stars, as well as an opportunity for animated debate while walking back to the car.

This year there’s a headliner leading the bill: David Birney playing Shylock, the Jewish moneylender in Venice, whose craving for revenge and legalistic fairness leads to his undoing.

Birney has more than his share of Broadway and regional theater credentials, but he’s more widely known for his television work, such as in St. Elsewhere and numerous TV movies. He certainly delivers the goods here. Birney’s Shylock has traits and qualities that make perfect sense as post-medieval survival skills for an oppressed people reluctantly allowed into the European world of commerce.

Shylock has loaned 3000 ducats to Bassanio (Nigel Gore), who needs the money to marry the beautiful Portia (Marion Markham). Securing the loan is Bassanio’s merchant friend Antonio (Edward Franklin), who is expecting the first of his three ships to return a month before the money is due. When the loan nevertheless gets into default, Shylock demands payment of the penalty fee he contracted: a pound of flesh. He wants to carve out the heart of Antonio because the man had previously called him a "cutthroat dog, and spit upon my Jewish gabardine."

Birney never loses his grip on the long-besieged patience of the man. Shylock can mistakenly be portrayed as scheming, but Shakespeare has him be blunt and open about his hatred toward Antonio. Since Birney subdues the glee Shylock is feeling when his vengeance is assured, what comes across to us is deeper than revenge. This Shylock certainly enjoys his visceral thrill in victory, but clearly he also is redressing age-old injustices perpetrated upon Jews in Europe, turning the law against the biased makers of those laws.

There is irony upon irony in this play — not only the one Shylock initially enjoys, but also the vindictiveness that rebounds to him when Portia disguises herself as a judge and turns the law once more to his ruin. At the end of this hearing before the duke, there is no mercy for the old Jew. That makes mincemeat of Portia’s speech on how "tThe quality of mercy is not strained" and blesses both giver and receiver, the hypocrisy all the more meaningful for going unnoticed by the characters.

That Shakespeare is at heart more anti-Semitic than understanding comes across with how he handles Shylock’s daughter, Jessica (Nora Blackall). Not only does the playwright have her steal her father’s moneybox without later remorse, she squanders 80 ducats in celebration, further demonstrating the reputed money-obsession trait of her tribe.

Under the direction of Harland Meltzer, the setting in fascist Italy — complete with black shirts, jack boots, and heil salutes — brings the racism closer to us. (Maybe a director will some day set this play in the White House of Nixon and Billy Graham.)

In the opening set-up scene, actors are allowed to be off-puttingly stagy, with the stilted diction and forced manner that all but requires non-theatergoers to roll their eyes. But some first-rate performers — more than half the cast are Actors Equity — soon rescue the play. Naturalness of manner and expression usually saves the day with Shakespeare. We can always rely on this with veteran Bob Colonna, who plays Shylock’s mischievous servant Launcelot. Personality and assured ease of delivery also makes the incidental role of Portia’s servant Nerissa stand out, invigorated as it is by an ever-attentive Kathryn Downie.

Markham’s Portia comes more alive later in the play, when she and her servant are in judicial drag in the court scene. With that momentum, she also makes things more interesting for us afterwards: she and Nerissa give their fiancŽs a hard time because the men had, in appreciation, presented the judges rings that the women had made them promise never to remove. Similarly, Nigel Gore as Portia’s suitor Bassanio is best when he has more to do emotionally. He rivets our attention when Antonio is in peril, and then again when Bassanio is baffled by Portia’s pretended unfaithfulness.

Other wonderful scenes include Jimi Egan’s as one of Portia’s suitors, since he doesn’t resort to a facile Castilian lisp but instead makes foppish pride hilarious. Paul Romero as Gratiano, friend to Bassanio and suitor to Nerissa, also puts some scenes to fine use.

Colonial Theatre has been staging summer Shakespeare in beautiful, stroll-inducing Wilcox Park since 1991. Performances are free, but donations are requested — and well-deserved.