The ObserverRoyal Shakespeare CompanyReviewRoyal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonAntonio and Bassanio are the revelation in Polly Findlay’s RSC production
The Globe is currently staging The Merchant of Venice with Jonathan Pryce. Now the RSC have put it on. You might think this suggested a quest by directors for what makes a scapegoat. Yet Shakespeare’s meanings are more slippery than that. Rupert Goold’s galvanic casino version, revived at the end of last year, made this – one of Shakespeare’s most troublesome plays – look like an explosion of capitalism, a forerunner of Enron. Now Polly Findlay’s production seems bent on reminding us that the merchant of the title is not the person with the strongest speeches – not Shylock but Antonio.
Findlay’s staging takes place… where? Not in a mercantile Venice or a (supposedly) anti-mercantile Belmont. Johannes Schütz’s design – a huge gold wall at the back of a bare stage in front of which a giant silver ball swings like a pendulum – looks like a giant executive toy. It reduces some strong actors to mechanical playthings.
I was agog to see Patsy Ferran’s Portia, having followed her rapid rise from debut appearance in Blithe Spirit only a year ago. She glimmers enough to show why some of us think she is a mighty actress in the making. Disguised as the lawyer, her attention is absolute, as if her whole body were on springs as she listens; her face is a white triangle of (justified) anxiety as she watches her future husband, Bassanio. Still, for all her vivacity, her undisguised Portia is spoken with too much uniform rapidity, marked by repetitive jabbing gestures, to be bewitching. She looks as if she is fighting for breath.
The Palestinian actor Makram J Khoury is a touching Shylock. He begins stoical and patient, as he describes his ill-treatment; he ends persistent and calm, having been spat on repeatedly by Christians who are more than ever the strutting dandy villains. Yet he is altogether muted. It is sometimes like listening to Andrew Sachs being tormented by Brand and Ross. For the Christians are by far the most lively characters on stage. Lively and thuggish.
Jamie Ballard’s Antonio, flushed and febrile, begins and ends the play alone on stage, reclaiming the title of the play for himself. He is wrecked not so much by tempests and debt as by his love for Bassanio. This is the point where Findlay’s production gathers pace. It is not the first time Bassanio and Antonio have been thought of as sexually intertwined, but this intertwining is particularly frank and convincing. Within minutes the men have kissed. Their confreres melt away knowingly when they see them together. Every mention of “love” is emphasised. As is the fact – I’d never noticed this before – that it is Antonio who persuades Bassanio to give away Portia’s ring.
Ferran’s attentiveness to all this and Ballard’s welling quality are crucial. They swing the play around in a new direction. But it loses too much in doing so.
At the Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon London, until 2 Sept
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