Right on the money

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

THE paradox of The Merchant of Venice has always been that it’s a boring old play with a fascinating fringe character. Remove Shylock and you’ve got one of the most insubstantial comedies Shakespeare ever collated.

Shylock is a mass of enthralling inconsistencies, as is the play itself. This makes it very much of its time, echoing as it does the economic anxieties of Elizabethan England as it transitioned from a medieval woollen world (Shakespeare was a son of the wool trade, and calls Shylock a wolf) to a wooden world of maritime empire.

Under director Anne-Louise Sarks, the inconsistencies and multiple storylines are lightly woven together into a nearperfect production. It emerges as a play about money, about loyalty, about integrity and, most potently, about race.

Of the many production of this play that I’ve seen, this is the first that built a strong and credible sense of enmity between Shylock (Mitchell Butel) and Antonio (Jo Turner). This is essential because it drives so much of the action, yet it is also an oddity for being inexplicable.

Butel, as Shylock, has many stunning moments, paralysing in their poignancy, and he creates much out of little. This is a Shylock with a history, a family, a past … a humanity.

Perfection is evident in the economy and elegance of the staging and, most particularly, in the pitch of the work.

The director has developed — and the 10-strong ensemble maintains — a delicate balance of levity and gravity that never falters. — ROBERT JARMAN