The Merchant Of Venice - The Lowry - 10/06/09 by Alex Beaumont

Even before its first publication, The Merchant of Venice was being referred to as The Jew of Venice. This might seem more appropriate, for the Jewish usurer Shylock is by far and away the most memorable of the play’s characters. Indeed, the eponymous merchant spends comparatively little time on stage, and could never be included in a tally of Shakespeare’s more intriguing creations.

But it shouldn’t be assumed that trade and mercantilism are thus beside the point. On the contrary: risk, investment and dividends are fundamental to the play. It’s all about value: the value of love and hate, of pity and revenge.

The story goes a little something like this. Bassanio wishes to travel to Belmont and woo the wealthy heiress Portia, whose father has contrived a bizarre test which he needs to pass in order to win her hand. He must choose between three caskets, made respectively of gold, silver and lead. In one of these caskets is a picture of Portia; if he picks that one, she’s his to marry.

But Bassanio isn’t wealthy, and in order to fund this amorous voyage he appeals to his good friend, the merchant Antonio. All of Antonio’s ships are at sea and he has nothing with which to subsidise Bassanio’s excursion, so instead he agrees to cover a bond for the sum. Enter Shylock. He despises Antonio, who spits on him for being Jewish. And so instead of lending the necessary 3,000 ducats at the usual rate of interest, Shylock insists that, should the bond remain unpaid at the end of three months, he’ll be entitled to cleave from Antonio’s body one pound of flesh.

In this way he conforms to a ghastly stereotype: that of the murderous, money-grubbing Jew. But he’s also as intriguing a character as Shakespeare ever created, and The Merchant of Venice is amongst the Bard’s most compelling plays. This alone provides reason to catch Propeller’s new version, which is at the Lowry until Saturday.

As we might expect, the setting has been tinkered with. Venice is no longer the city of a thousand canals – it’s a prison, with a host of vicious inmates who bully and taunt one another. The stage is a steely chicken coop. Murky deals are made across trestle tables below bare and ugly lights. There’s nothing romantic about this Venice: it’s seedy, cruel, and ugly.

In keeping with this, Shylock is rather more violent than usual. Richard Clothier offers a good performance, but his attempt at rendering the much-abused moneylender sympathetic – which is vital in balancing out the play’s graphic anti-Semitism – are not helped by a dubious decision on director Edward Hall’s part.

There are relatively few moments in Shakespeare’s text in which Shylock courts our sympathy, in which we really come to understand the motive behind the terms of his bloody bond. One of these is when he asks us to consider his thirst for revenge not in the light of his Jewishness, but his humanity. Isn’t a Jew ‘fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases’ as a Christian – or anybody else, for that matter?

Hall has him deliver these lines while cutting out a Christian’s eye and throwing it at his feet. Maybe he’s trying to say something about the viciousness of humanity here, but I’m not convinced. There’s only so much affinity you can feel with someone who ties a man to a post and levers out his eyeball with a pocket knife. It feels unnecessary, gratuitous, and it sheds little light on Shylock’s character.

Elsewhere, though, the production is on surer ground. It plays with gender in an amusing and discomfiting way. In Elizabethan times, of course, the female characters would have been played by men – a tradition Propeller revives in the all-male context of a prison. Portia’s maid Nerissa is played by a portly Chris Myles, who trots onto the stage dressed in ankle boots, fishnets and a girdle. We never see Nerissa kiss her husband Gratiano, but maybe that’s a good thing.

The acting is good, the production design effective, and the music and singing are apt and often witty. The shift in setting doesn’t uncover any new aspect to the play, but it is enjoyable in a grubby sort of way. Those who are unfamiliar with The Merchant of Venice won’t struggle to follow it here, and those who do know it will enjoy what amounts to a decent production of one of Shakespeare’s most compelling and controversial plays.