Review: A MERCHANT OF VENICE, Playground Theatre

Shakespeare can be done any way you choose, no holds Bard (c'mon, he's done worse himself), but I confess that my preference is for up close and personal. Better still if some of his convoluted plots' clutter is swept aside and a more manageable number of characters occupy our attention. But, but... editing Shakespeare, the greatest of them all! How can such sacrilege be permitted?

Done well, what emerges, sans fripperies and distractions, are the words, the themes and the drama. Shakespeare In Italy's first production, pointedly titled A Merchant Of Venice, delivers the first two of that holy trinity of theatre, but probably needs a bit of oomph applied to the third. Nevertheless, it's a very encouraging start and it's a fine night out in the shadow of the Westway.

Antonio, seemingly bewitched by Bassanio's youthful chutzpah, stands as guarantor of the 3000 ducats the young man borrows from Shylock. Bassanio's fortunes are looking up when he uses the cash to woo the heiress Portia, solving her riddle and winning her hand. Things turn sour when Antonio's profits are lost at sea and Shylock, sensing his chance both to skewer a rival and revenge the antisemitism to which he has been subjected all his life, demands his infamous pound of flesh.

The Merchant is a wonderful play, often brutal, sometimes joyous and always, always, appallingly relevant. Of course, it has its problems for 21st century audiences, Shylock a caricature Jew at times and there's a sordid triumphalism too easily accepted at his fate. But the pain in his soul is palpable and his stubbornness comes across as far more excusable than Antonio's towering sense of entitlement that so fed his complacency. The viscerally felt absence of a Hollywood ending has always been enough for me to despise Antonio's arrogant gang - even the super-bright Portia - and freight all my sympathy towards the man broken by his forgivable hubris. But that's Shakey - he lets you do the work.

If Peter Tate's Shylock is the heart of Bill Alexander's adaptation - and it's great to see anger as well as those beautifully constructed speeches in Tate's moneylender - John McAndrew gives his Antonio a brooding presence. Is he depressed? Is he fighting unrequited love for Bassanio? Is he flattened by the fact that Shylock has won? Antonio's fate defines much of the play, but he seems as much an absence as a presence - an interesting choice that might have worked better had the drama been cranked up elsewhere.

Lena Robin and Alexander Knox make for a handsome pair of lovers, the lad as dim as the girl is sharp. I enjoyed Robin's French lilt in her delivery, underlining her difference from the Rialto sharks to whom she is drawn, but Portia misses her Nerissa, the pair's girlish fun coming across as too vindictive when the conspiratorial giggles and glances are absent. Her set piece dismissal of the hopeless suitors, rushed through with some swiping left, also pushes the mood down when it could be lifted.

Alex Wilson gives us a wriggling, vicious Gratiano, channeling all Venice's hatred of Shylock and his tribe, the young man charismatic but cruel. Mary Chater as Solania pines for Antonio (even if we think he may be more taken with the gondolier than her) and isn't really given enough to do to establish herself in this high-testosterone, high-stakes world.

So we loses a little light and shade and the drama may be a little too linear and underpowered in its development, but the words are spoken beautifully by the entire cast and the themes of prejudice, mercy, justice, debt, forgiveness, trickery, hubris (I could go on) leap across the centuries to find parallels in the flawed (and worse) people who inhabit London's streets, which, as it turns out, are not so different to Venice's canals.

A Merchant of Venice is at the Playground Theatre until 4 December

Photo Guy Bell