THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
During the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice, directed by Antoni Cimolino, Shylock sits with his whole body clenched like a fist, with a nervous and edgy energy barely contained within him. To this point, he has shown himself to be a well-seasoned embodiment of his Jewish heritage, and a man capable of wounded humour, menacing innuendo, implicit defiance, and the ability to mock the stereotype of a Jew with which he is burdened in Venetian society. He seems somewhat impatient in acceptance of his persecution, seems much occupied and preoccupied with the money he lends, and is obviously an older parent of accumulated societal wounds that are assuaged by his daughter, Jessica, whom he diligently protects.
When Jessica betrays him from inside his own home, from inside his own heritage, he becomes a palpably distraught father who has lost both daughter and ducats. He holds an image of his daughter at the trial and declares his name to be not Shylock but Shy-loch, with guttural emphasis on the last syllable. He is alone and betrayed and victimized, and he now desperately seeks to protect not only his identity but his very being that his society would eradicate.
As Shylock, Scott Wentworth maintains an emotional centre that vibrates. In the first half, he is more quietly accommodating and self-contained, since he has learned well how to function in a society that would do him in. Later, when all is lost, he erupts and claims his pound of flesh, almost in an obsessively mad way that drives his fellow Jew to leave the court room seemingly offended. Meanwhile, soldiers in the court get their jollies with implied persecution of him, for Shylock, as a Jew, is an easy mark, especially when the system systematically is out to get him.
The irony here is that Portia is briefly the voice of that same system. She also begins the play with a burdened attitude since, after all, she is an impressively capable woman being married off via a guessing game. Played by Michelle Giroux, she is animated in voice and manner, now beautiful and verging down the road on old maid, perhaps suggesting an embitteredness at being treated as a commodity. She can play the moneyed hostess with a compelling remoteness of person, urge Bassanio to the right casket like a predator in heat, and speak with a voice of complex and gentle vulnerability. In all it’s a spirited interpretation of a trapped person. For, to show her ability, she must take on a “manly stride” in court and, in turn, we feel Portia’s burden almost, at times, as much as that of Shylock. Like Wentworth, Giroux gives a demanding performance.
Antoni Cimolino’s thoughtful direction gives us a very theatrical and accessible production, one that is comprehensively rather damning of the young, of relationships, of inhuman opportunism, of racism which includes both the Moor and the Spaniard as subtle victims, of sexism, of anti-Semitism, and of humans in general. After all, those children around Shylock, young as they may be, are already sadistic persecutors. Cimilino’s actors play their parts well and some –like Ron Pederson, Jonathan Goad, Steven Sutcliffe, and Anand Rajaram- do so with appealing individuality.
What stands out here is Wentworth’s unflinchingly blunt yet subtle realization of a complex Shylock. It’s a characterization spoken from the gut and in turn it punches one in the gut. There is no need to lay on the Klezmer clarinets, the recordings of Hitler and Mussolini, the air raid siren, the distracting Fiddler on the Roof feel, all of which feel self-conscious and tend to distract from an inherently challenging play. The Merchant of Venice demands we look honestly into a mirror and dare know what cruel madness we, all of us, are each day. Cimolino’s production is thus most potent when it is most unrelentingly true to the basics of human nature and without decoration.
TAKING SHAKESPEARE
John Murrell’s Taking Shakespeare is a stage-friendly, entertaining, quietly touching, and somewhat predictable creation with two characters, Martha Henry as a richly-realized Prof and Luke Humphrey as an older student Murph. Prof is a cranky academic who punches out quips and questions that, in her encounter with the younger generation, drip with disbelief. She is worn and battle-scarred from years of teaching, an isolated individual who knows Shakespeare better than she does “any living person”. She wonders “where did the living person I used to be go?” as she continues to avoid the political games of the academic world. Meanwhile, her accumulated wounds of spirit are sometimes spoken with gusto here and those in the audience with some years behind them will understand deeply what she means.
Murph is an unformed and uninformed thinker of vague half thoughts which he seems disinclined to expand. He likes only mountains and video games, so when given the task of tutoring him in Shakespeare, Prof understandably worries “How the hell are we going to do this?” The generation gap between the two is blatantly present and it becomes clear that each inhabits a different life experience. When he reverts to cliché, she says “don’t try that fucking Coles Notes crap with me”. When he probes too personal, she responds, “Mind your own fucking business”. The implications and connections in their relationship are, wisely, not overdone and thus we believe the reality of their tentative encounter.
Gradually, Prof guides Murph from asking vague questions to making self-revealing and self-risking assertions, something she perhaps could not do often enough in her own life. Henry’s performance is a gem of evocative indications about her inner world and Humphreys’ is one of endearing and seemingly natural vagaries. We do come to wonder about the deeper lives of these two, although the play, filled with much juicy dialogue for actors as it is, goes according to plan. Still, who doesn’t enjoy hearing the insights into Shakespeare that the two work out together, each one with a life on the line as she or he explores the meaning of art and all it entails?
THE THRILL
In The Thrill, eloquently put to page by Judith Thompson and directed by Dean Gabourie for respectful clarity of subtexts and humanizing characterization, Elora, played by Lucy Peacock, is immediately engaging. From a wheelchair, she asks boldly, “What makes you think I want to walk like you?” for this play’s issues are as much directed at the audience as to the three other characters. As she sits with clawed and gnarled hands, she speaks with a southern precision and drawl in her voice to make us face ourselves. The second plot line, in turn, involves an elderly and defiantly bedridden Hanna, ably played without compromise by Patricia Collins. She feels that others consider her “of no use to anyone” and declares “I’m only happy when I am in bed”.
Hanna’s son Julian is visiting her while on tour to promote a book inspired by his severely damaged sister who ultimately died in a painful four hour long seizure. Being deeply affected by this pain she endured, he presents in his book the argument that “parents should have a choice to do what is best for their very sick babies”. When Julian and Elora meet, she is hostile because the attitude he advocates could, by implication, have her done in, especially since “a lack of resources is the issue” in keeping her alive.
Julian has Elora present an alternative to his views in a public talk and the play’s audience becomes their audience. At the matinee performance I attended the average age of this same audience seemed to be at least sixty, so the issues under discussion no doubt had significant resonance among them, as did Elora’s declaration, “I love my life, people”. When the relationship of Elora and Julian goes sexual, there is a genuinely touching poignancy in the caution and awkwardness of their physical connection. Very soon, the physically doomed Elora will ask “Is this it, is the beginning of the end, do I have no other choice then?” and she then awaits the inevitable end of her swallowing, voice, hearing, sight, and mind.
Thompson’s text is quick-minded and exceedingly clear about life and death issues. Many of these are focused on Lucy Peacock’s Elora who, nevertheless, is feisty, playful, confident, incisive, with eyes that wander and charm with rich expressiveness. The lighting by Itai Erdal isolates and dramatizes each situation with assertive power and the electric sound creations by Jesse Ash carry a commanding punch. In all it is an entertaining and thought-provoking production. However, it does leave one to wonder about the fate of those who, unlike Elora, are not articulate and eloquent about their own decay, not beautiful and charming, but mute, unwanted, and self-hating as they die alone. Nevertheless, it is significant that discussion about issues often avoided by many has voice in this production.