April 18, 2000: Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
April 18, 2000: Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
National Theatre, Olivier. Directed by Trevor Nunn
A brilliant, moving mounting of the play that confronts the issue of anti-Semitism head on. Henry Goodman as Shylock is very “Jewish” — Orthodox garb, thick accent; what little scope he has left to be “friendly” with Antonio is destroyed by his daughter Jessica’s absconding with his wealth. The “merry jest” of the bond is just the sort of potentially deadly, aggressive merriness that is characteristic of Shylock, who both loves this daughter and abuses her physically. He is compulsive, paranoid — an utterly divided man, made so by the incessant bad treatment at the hands of the Christians. Jessica herself in this production is the pivotal character. When Shylock slaps her, we see her whole history with this father written on her face: as if to say, “This is what he always does to me.” She can no longer tolerate it, and she abandons him for marriage with the Christian. But she cannot divest herself of her ethnicity, of her Hebrew heritage. It is a moving moment when Shylock and Jessica sing a treasured Hebrew song together; we see her sing such a song much later, at Belmont. And there, although she has exchanged her drab, unattractive house dress for a shimmering, copper -colored sleeveless gown, she carries a deep freight of guilt over what she has done, though much in love with her husband and capable of the banter with him in the moonlight that Shakespeare invents for this couple in Act V. She is her father’s daughter.
The complexity, the self-dividedness of these two characters sets a tone for the entire play. The period is Italy in the late 1920’s or early 1930’s, an Italy ripe for fascism. Café society is big, and important, and decadent. Belmont is more of a high-class extension of Venice than the other world it is generally taken to be in other productions. Cocktails are poured, records are played on a Victrola, Portia is dressed in a shimmering, sophisticated dinner gown, and the appointments are early futuristic. An unfinished Klimt, resplendent in gold leaf, depicts women as very expensive objects of desire. The relationship between Antonio and Bassanio is played openly but not excessively as homoerotic, but mainly on Antonio’s part. We know why he is so sad. He keeps his feelings fairly well hidden from Solanio, Solario, Gratiano, and the rest, but not from us. As played by David Bamber, there is a gravity, a pained wistfulness about the character that reads very clearly and contrastingly in this superficial, pleasure-seeking, and probably doomed society. Bamber has a deliberate, flawlessly articulate manner of delivery that is just right for the character who finds it difficult to acquiesce to the hard fate that his love for Bassanio has brought upon him. The loss of all his argosies is almost as nothing compared to his loss of the younger man whom he adores and impulsively kisses on the eve of Bassanio’s exposition to Colchis — so