| |
|
|
The Publick’s Merchant of Venice
BY SALLY CRAGIN
|
The Merchant of Venice
By William Shakespeare. Directed by Diego Arciniegas. Set by Arciniegas and C. Russ Fletcher. Lighting by Tim Sawicki. Costumes by Rafael Jaen. Sound by John Doerschuk. Music by Steven Barkhimer. With Kortney Adams, Diego Arciniegas, Steven Barkhimer, Ozzie Carnan Jr., Stacy Fischer, Richard LaFrance, Jessalyn Maguire, and Nathaniel McIntyre. At the Publick Theatre, in repertory through September 5.
|
|
|
|
|
Surely there are no businessmen in the Shakespeare canon more thoroughly defeated than The Merchant of Venice’s Shylock and Antonio. These two, locked in a vicious mutual-destruction pact by way of the Jewish usurer’s loan to the naval speculator, are at the center of Merchant. Often called a problem comedy, the play is neither true tragedy (nobody dies) nor comedy (could the japes about Jewry and the antics of clowns Lancelot Gobbo and his old dad be more tedious?). Instead, the play explores the perils of contractual obligations, be they fiscal or filial. The Publick Theatre’s flawed but still game production of the drama (in repertory with the less frequently performed Troilus and Cressida) starts slow but, despite some miscasting and wooden performances from minor characters, moves briskly enough. Certainly it’s a welcome departure from the usual summer formula: Outdoors + Shakespeare = Comedy. There are, of course, few laugh lines and little lightness in this play, in which a loan is secured by a pound of human flesh that very nearly gets lopped off. Still, actor/director Diego Arciniegas’s version of an openly gay brooding and fretful Antonio is dour indeed. Here the character’s relationship with Bassanio is mostly a source of anxiety to him. It’s clear he has sexual feelings for his friend, though Bassanio is ostensibly in pursuit of Portia, the Belmont heiress who puts things right via some deft legal trickery in the courtroom. For her part, she is (mostly unenthusiastically) in search of a suitor who can figure out a puzzle left by her father. As Shylock, Steven Barkhimer brings a bearish gruffness to an intermittently passionate performance. He possesses the clearest diction of this company, and he invests the moneylender with thoughtfulness and some hubris. His Shylock is eager to hear about Antonio’s doings, but his ire at Antonio’s business practices (he doesn’t charge interest) seems muted, even disinterested. Barkhimer is an oddly detached Shylock, and this doesn’t bode well for the production. We need Shylock to be distinctive — maddening, even preposterous, yet sympathetic, so that we feel uncomfortable every time things go badly for him. Whereas Portia’s deceased father protected her from fools by subjecting potential suitors to the riddle of the caskets, Shylock alienates daughter Jessica (played primly by Jessalyn Maguire), who rebels by committing the ultimate betrayal. (We should be unsure whether that’s looting her father’s house, eloping with Lorenzo, or converting to Christianity.) At the Publick, Shylock seems to be trying to convince himself that everything’s still copasetic when he hears that Antonio’s ships are lost — calling in his bond may make up for the loss of his own precious jewel. But when Barkhimer recites the famous "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech, his casualness leeches the speech of its redemptive power. Stacy Fischer has proved splendid in contemporary roles, but her Portia (swaddled in flowing robes like a houri — or an Yves Saint Laurent model circa 1981) is a pretty doll, not the brilliantly adamantine mind that finds the loophole in Shylock’s "pound of flesh" demand. There’s a touch of Ally McBeal in Fischer’s "quality of mercy" speech — it’s as if she were trying to convince herself rather than Shylock and the audience. As Bassanio, Nathaniel McIntyre, a strapping blond bloke, has an appropriately adoring spaniel quality when contemplating Portia, but these two never catch fire. Their union seems like the kind of arranged marriage you see in high school when the head cheerleader has to date the team quarterback or lose face in the cafeteria. But Arciniegas has his actors make the most of the oddly shaped playing space, which has a balcony and a long runway extending into the audience from stage left. Billowing two-story curtains are pulled on and off by various performers; these are most effective when backlit, the lamps hung on the trees making for irregular and evocative shadowing. But I yearned for more footlights and greater use made of the lights that shine through square barred apertures in the floor. The cuts in the script are judicious, and Arciniegas’s own performance as Antonio is disquieting but also riveting. Earlier this summer, he explained that he wanted this production to be as much about xenophobia as about anti-Semitism. The final image — of Antonio alone on the stage, resolutely without Bassanio — is unexpected and haunting.
|
