But the strength of the production ... is that the action springs from a precise social and psychological context; and one of the undoubted beneficiaries is John Carlisle's excellent Antonio, presented as a tormented closet-gay.
That is not especially original. What is new is the idea that in such a rabidly conformist world Antonio would actually prefer death to restricted life; and Mr Carlisle greets his salvation with sullen, angry resentment.53
In these interpretations the genuineness of Bassanio's feelings is called into question, leaving the audience to ponder whether Portia will receive the expected happiness at their union. In 1971:
[As] Tony Church plays him there is no question of his love for Bassanio, but it is a melancholy undemanding love with no physical expression; thus it becomes acceptable within the production's romantic terms ... in scenes like that following the trial, where he tries to hold polite conversation while on the brink of nervous collapse, he makes old situations brand new ... [Michael Williams' Bassanio] makes an opening display of smothering Antonio in grateful kisses, but after that he reverts to the perfect lover: while [Judi] Dench turns her radiant resources on Portia so as to burn up personal characteristics in the sheer experience of love.54
Due to the inherent doubts over Bassanio's motivations--he makes it clear that he is initially out for a wealthy match, and at the trial states that his love for Antonio is greater than his love for his new bride--the portrayal of the wooing of Portia has also become a means of differentiating Bassanio from her other suitors. In Barton's 1978 production:
The first two suitors approached her from behind, avoiding eye contact, whereas Bassanio knelt in front and addressed her directly over the caskets ... creating a silent moment of human contact ... The exchange of lovers' rings occurred underneath a central spotlight emphasising the importance of the exchange and creating a strong image that would later prove significant ... an important learning process ...
Antonio rejoined the lovers' hands, reconciling the worlds of Belmont and Venice, and the rings were once again held in the central light used during the betrothal scene. This was evidence of a greater understanding gained through experience, and as Portia pronounced, "It is almost morning" [5.1.313] it promised an understanding that would develop and mature in future.55
Deborah Findlay (1987) pointed out that in the wooing scenes:
Both Morocco and Aragon want to dominate Portia, Morocco by machismo and Aragon by a patronizing approach. We felt that Morocco would treat a wife as his property, appropriate her physically, so there was a bit of manhandling in the scene which Portia reacted against. This may have been seen as reacting against his colour but it is much more to do with being treated as a sexual object--an interesting conundrum: who is the oppressor?56
In this production both Jew and woman were the oppressed races, at the mercy of the charity of the white Christian male. This was driven home by a very startling final image of Antonio and Jessica, two characters who themselves will always remain outsiders because of sexuality and race. However, Antonio, being a man and a Christian, powerfully demonstrated which sex and which religion remained on top. Jessica was left
... half kneeling before Antonio, trying to get back the long chain and cross she has dropped in her haste to keep up with Lorenzo. Antonio draws it from her, mastering for a moment a victim who is still nothing but a Jew and a woman. And then there is darkness.57
The link between Portia and Shylock has been emphasized in many productions. Of John Barton's 1981 revival of his 1978 production, Sinead Cusack explained:
A lot of people ask why then does Portia put everyone through all that misery and why does she play cat-and-mouse with Shylock. The reason is that she doesn't go into the courtroom to save Antonio (that's easy) but to save Shylock, to redeem him--she is passionate to do that. She gives him opportunity after opportunity to relent and to exercise his humanity ... It is only when he shows himself totally ruthless and intractable (refusing even to allow a surgeon to stand by) that she offers him more justice than he desires.58
One critic commented:
Besides her apt resemblance to a fairytale princess Miss Cusack is one of the rare Portias who can stay in character while enlarging on the quality of mercy (which she plays as a strictly forensic argument) ... There is no trace of the bitch or the boss lady. All the essential characteristics are there, but for once human accuracy does not disfigure the fable.59
Portia's reaction to Antonio's demand that Shylock renounce his faith can also be a key moment in which to demonstrate her innate decency. In David Thacker's 1993 production, Penny Downie played her "with glowing intelligence, as a decent woman visibly upset by Shylock's forced conversion to Christianity."60
This reaction again came from an empathy with Shylock's plight as a victimized section of society: "[She] subtly and generously portrays a Portia who is both imperious and victimised, a woman who knows she has been made into a bargaining counter and clings to her dignity as to a lifebelt."61
The actor playing Portia has the difficulty of creating a character that a modern audience can believe has an immense capacity for love and generosity of spirit, despite the many dubious lines Shakespeare has given her. As a result, it is often Portia herself who is on trial in the courtroom, as she will be judged by her actions and reactions to the bigoted Venetian mentality. Surely Shakespeare's intention was to have us believe that "Belmont becomes the soul which Venice has lost."62 As director David Thacker explained: "Belmont offers us something that can renew and reform. It allows the quality of mercy to spread throughout the whole civilization and heal."63
THE DIRECTOR'S CUT: INTERVIEWS WITH DAVID THACKER AND DARKO TRESNJAK
David Thacker's directing career spans more than thirty years, during which time he has directed over a hundred productions. He is particularly known for his close working relationship with the American playwright Arthur Miller, directing the British premieres of four of his plays. He has been artistic director of the Young Vic and Lancaster's Dukes theater as well as director in residence at the RSC, for whom he has directed The Two Gentlemen of Verona, Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice (discussed here), Coriolanus, and Pericles, which won the Olivier Awards for Best Director and Best Revival. At the Young Vic he directed An Enemy of the People, Ghosts, Some Kind of Hero by Les Smith, A Touch of the Poet by Eugene O'Neill, and Comedians by Trevor Griffiths. He also works prolifically in television, having directed more than thirty TV productions. In 2008 he was appointed artistic director of the Octagon Theatre in Bolton.
Darko Tresnjak is a prominent American theater director. He has received the Alan Schneider Award for Directing Excellence and several other awards. Born in the city of Zemun, Yugoslavia (now Serbia), he emigrated to the United States with his mother when he was ten years old. He graduated from Swarthmore College in 1988, then attended the Columbia University School of the Arts MFA theater directing program. From 2004 to 2007 he was artistic director of the Old Globe Shakespeare Festival in San Diego, California, where he is now resident artistic director. His productions there have included Pericles, The Winter's Tale, Hamlet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Titus Andronicus, The Comedy of Errors, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and Antony and Cleopatra. He talks here about his modern dress (Wall Street-style) production of The Merchant of Venice with Theater for a New Audience in New York, which transferred to Stratford-upon-Avon in 2007 as part of the RSC Complete Works Festival. Shylock was F. Murray Abraham, winner of an Oscar for his role as Salieri in the movie Amadeus.
The Merchant of Venice is the play that has changed in our common estimation and viewpoint probably more than any other, because of twentieth-century history. What implications did that have for your production? Does the play demand that you take a particular line on it?
THACKER: It had very profound implications for the production. I'm not sure I'd ever describe it as a particular "line," but I think that you have particular responsibilities in directing that play. Your primary responsib
ility is to William Shakespeare. When you do any production of a Shakespeare play you have a profound responsibility to try to understand the play and to try to express it as richly and as powerfully as you can. Having said that, I think every play is responsive not only to the time in which it was written, but also the time in which you perform it. And certain things that are acceptable to one generation are not acceptable when time moves on. Because of the extent of anti-Semitism in our society, and because of what Jewish people have had to suffer historically, coming to a terrible climax in the Holocaust, I think it is vital that you approach this play with enormous care and sensitivity.
When I'm directing any play by Shakespeare I try to approach it as if William Shakespeare was in the rehearsal room with us. If I was working with a living playwright I would be in constant dialogue about the meaning of the play and what the playwright was trying to achieve, and how we might express that most effectively. With Shakespeare, self-evidently, you can't speak to him or conjure him up, so all you can do is proceed honestly and with integrity in relation to that play. I believe that if Shakespeare were alive now he would not give permission for the play to be performed uncut--I'm certain that he would rewrite it. It's the only Shakespeare play I've ever directed where I said at the beginning of the rehearsal period, "I'm going to make some cuts." The context has changed so drastically that I think that the play needs delicate attention. I think that does affect the meaning of the play, and so I was very clear in my own mind that this was a conscious decision I would take. These weren't massive changes and to a lot of people might have been totally imperceptible. It was partly, for example, a number of judicious prunings of the word "Jew," particularly when uttered by Portia. Although it's fashionable to turn Portia into a kind of rich bitch, she is clearly the life force at the heart of the play. She is the person who argues passionately for redemption, for the classic Shakespearean themes--particularly as his achievement grew to full maturity in the Late Plays--of mercy, redemption, forgiveness. But in that scene I don't know how many times we cut the word "Jew." It becomes like a hammer banging on a nail, "Jew," "Jew," "Jew," "Jew," all with a slight pejorative edge to it. It inevitably affects what one's sensitivities are in relation to the character, so there was a slight pruning there.
People might think we were oversensitive to the use of "Jew," but if you look at the rest of Shakespeare's canon, leaving The Merchant of Venice out, there are only six other uses of the word "Jew," and every one is pejorative. Launce's wonderful comic speech in The Two Gentlemen of Verona, telling the audience about his dog, says "A Jew would have wept!"--but not the dog. Even a Jew would have wept, therefore this dog is even worse than a Jew--that is the joke. This is the stuff of normal comedy within Shakespeare--you can't hide from the fact that the rest of his work regards the word "Jew" and therefore being Jewish in a negative light. Having said that, it indicates what a fantastic achievement The Merchant of Venice is, because Shakespeare makes Shylock, in so many senses, so sympathetic. "Hath not a Jew eyes?" It's almost like Shakespeare, because of his own humanity, is digging as deep as he could possibly dig to show us a Jewish person in a sympathetic light, but even within that context he couldn't quite rid himself of his own culture and the limitations of his own society, his personal history, all the rest of it. Therefore I would say the proper responsibility of an artist in relation to that is to make a personal decision that says "I really don't believe that Shakespeare would want this." You might think that is a terribly arrogant thing to say, but any choice you make about any Shakespeare production is an assumption about what you believe he would have wanted. Nothing is neutral, you make crucial interpretive decisions all the way along, so it's essentially only a decision of that kind to say, "I just don't think Shakespeare would want this."
I found it an utterly delightful experience doing the play and I was proud of it and proud of the work that everybody did. I was blessed with an exceptional cast, in particular to have David Calder playing Shylock, because what David brings to the table is not just his skill as an actor but his intelligence, something Penny Downie [who played Portia] shares as well. They helped me enormously in the developing conception of the show. It was the collective endeavor, I think, of that group of actors, that turned it into something that I think we all thoroughly believed in, and believed was very special.
5. "[I]t became even clearer why Shylock, a devout, sensitive, and serious man, would have such difficulty with drunken lager-louts and Christians"--David Thacker production, 1993.
TRESNJAK: It had enormous implications, especially in New York, where our production originated and where staging the play is still far more controversial than staging it in England. From the earliest planning phases to the opening night we worked extensively with James Shapiro, the author of Shakespeare and the Jews. His insights were invaluable--not just about the text but about the entire production history of the play. In many discussions, the word that we kept coming back to was exclusion. How are the characters in The Merchant of Venice marginalized or excluded--because of their religion, gender, age, race, sexuality, or economic status? In a workshop that took place six months before the actual production, I got to play around with the ways in which the text could support various forms of exclusion, and I found that this approach nourished both the tragic and the comic aspects of the play. (Granted, much of the humor was rather cruel.) Most of all, it helped me see Shylock as a part of the universe that Shakespeare creates in The Merchant of Venice. And, directing the play in 2007, that seemed to me like a worthwhile goal, to reincorporate Shylock into the general fabric of the play.
How did you and your designer represent the contrasting settings of Venice and Belmont?
THACKER: I had the inspiration to do Merchant on Black Wednesday, because, like the events of that day, things happen in the play so rapidly. That's when the idea of setting it in a modern London came. We modeled the world of Venice on the Lloyd's building, so it was the world of the stock exchange, big business, suits, money, computers, mobile phones, all that sort of stuff. The challenge with all of Shakespeare is to invent a world that you believe is the world of the play. With Belmont, which is always tricky, what we most wanted the audience to focus on was the caskets. So if there was a criticism of the production in retrospect, I'd say I think Venice was, in design terms, very powerful and persuasive, and Belmont might not have resonated so powerfully.
TRESNJAK: According to the critic Marjorie Garber, The Merchant of Venice presents us with "the opposites that are increasingly similar" during the course of the play. One of those seeming opposites is Venice versus Belmont. Both worlds are ultimately ruled by financial considerations. So for me, the most important practical concern was to move swiftly from one setting to the other, because I did not want the textual similarities and the thematic connections to get obliterated by long and elaborate scenic changes.
The constant in John Lee Beatty's set design for the play were three sleek desks with three Apple PowerBooks on top of them. Above each desk was a flatscreen monitor. In Venice, we projected stock market quotes on the monitors. I was inspired by the Internet cafes of New York City and by the trading floor down on Wall Street. The characters would tune out of conversations to check their e-mail or to answer their cell phones. (Today, technology is another way that we exclude and marginalize each other on a moment-to-moment basis.) The bulk of our fourteen-member cast was featured in these scenes. The characters smashed into each other throughout. I wanted to create a rude and congested urban setting. In Belmont, the three PowerBooks represented the three caskets and we projected Shakespeare's riddles on the monitors above them. Working on an off-Broadway budget, I had to turn our own financial considerations into a dramatic statement. So Portia's entire household staff consisted of Nerissa and Balthasar, who we thought of as Portia's IT guy. I imagined Belmont as a hi-tech haven that Portia's father had left her, isolated, under-populated, and eerie.
6. F. Murray Abraham as Shylock and Tom Nelis as
Antonio in Darko Tresnjak's 2007 production, set in a modern financial center, with flatscreen monitors and Apple PowerBooks.
Bassanio sometimes seems like a gold-digger rather than a romantic lead. Are there any social relations in this play that aren't dependent on money?
THACKER: I think he is a gold-digger, but I also think he falls in love! I don't think that if he wasn't massively attracted to Portia to begin with he'd ask Antonio to lend him the money. I think he can't believe his luck really. There's nothing that I remember from directing the play that implies he doesn't love her. I think Bassanio is a really tough part because he has some very difficult speeches to handle, like the speech when he chooses the lead casket. Technically that's a very difficult speech to get the hang of. But I felt that he became more and more attractive and charismatic as the play develops. I think we grow to like Bassanio very much by the end, and I think because Portia loves him we forgive him a lot. I don't think he's one of Shakespeare's greatest creations: if you asked me to list all the male hero leads in order of preference, he'd be way down the list somewhere. He can't compare with Romeo, Hamlet, and God knows how many other young men that Shakespeare created, but I think he works in this play.
TRESNJAK: Our production ended with the three couples swaying to the Rosemary Clooney recording of "How Am I to Know?" The lyrics of the Dorothy Parker/Jack King song struck me as rather appropriate: