(no subject)
Mar. 11th, 2011 01:58 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI saw this exact same Merchant of Venice, with Darko Tresnjak directing and F. Murray Abraham as Shylock, with these costumes and these sets, in a different theater four years ago. And it was a completely different play.
Back then, AIG was an insurance company that aired Super Bowl commercials and Goldman Sachs a phenomenally successful investment bank and the show was being played in a Broadway theater for a crowd of theatergoers.
So much has changed since Spring 2007. I've graduated college, found a job, tried to figure out how to negotiate adulthood. The economy crashed, we got our first Black President, an oil company dumped millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. All of those external changes made this a very different show.
The opening scene, with Antonio and all of his friends dressed as Wall Street investors or bankers or lawyers, was awkward and false, as if these people knew the doom awaiting them and were trying to, well, mask it with booze and easy women and loose talk. Sound familiar? In this staging, Antonio=AIG didn't need to be said. It was understood. Portia = Goldman didn't need to be said. It was there if you were looking for it.
And the thing about this recontextualization is that it accommodates the play's racism and antisemitism and misogyny without any struggle whatsoever. The play takes place in the highest bastions of the patriarchy. Are you surprised to see these bankers and brokers sitting around in their office shooting the bull about women they've slept with, parties they've been to, pranks they've pulled? Of course not. Are you surprised that none of them are black, but most of their servants are? Of course not. (Of particular note is a fascinating casting move, making Nerissa black. When Portia utters her infamous slur about the Prince of Morocco's complexion, a light turns to Nerissa and shows her shock at the betrayal that Portia doesn't even seem to realize she's committed.) Privilege like you wouldn't believe is on display.
Antonio makes no apology at all for hating Jews. With his life on the line, he doesn't try reasoning with Shylock, just makes a resigned speech about the blackness of Shylock's heart. And it's brilliantly done because the director has shown us so well at this point that for all Shylock's evil (And make no mistake, this production does not make him anything less than a monster. Abraham's shouts in the climactic scene "I will have my bond!" are from the deepest part of his heart, one of the sincerest moments his character has.), he is desperate for the approval of these people and the right kind of appeal from Antonio probably could have worked.
One more are you surprised, because it brings out a theme of the play oft-overlooked, or at least, oft focused differently. Are you surprised that when the bankers and brokers are out for a debauched night on the town, Shylock is scared for the safety of his beautiful daughter? This is a play about sexual violence. Critics usually look at Portia, bound by her father to marry whoever wins a stupid game. But amidst his generic fear of violent antisemitic outbreaks, Shylock's fear that his daughter will be raped looms large in this staging. I see clear echoes of the story of Jacob and Dina in the Jessica plot.
Oh, that's another thing I wanted to talk about. I love that Shakespeare makes his Jew better at quoting Scripture than his Christians. Shylock's speech about Jacob and Laban is effective and reasonably accurate. Gobbo's speech about the sins of the father is theologically and scripturally garbled. But I think these two scenes are foregrounded very well here, illustrating the Biblical undertones of the story, implying the history that leads to these ancestral hatreds. The reason this play endures, the reason we still stage it despite the fact that it's so nasty and racist and easy to misstage, is that it really is an incredibly intricate and beautiful play. By keeping the notes on the caskets on screens for all of the Belmont scenes, they called attention to the way those messages "Who chooses me will get what many men desire," etc... are echoed in the Venetian storylines. From a dramatic standpoint, there is nothing whatsoever that Shakespeare got wrong in this play. It's just so deep and full of meaning.
I've said next to nothing about Shylock, probably cause that's a whole post in itself. But F. Murray Abraham is the greatest Shylock I've ever seen, still.
Back then, AIG was an insurance company that aired Super Bowl commercials and Goldman Sachs a phenomenally successful investment bank and the show was being played in a Broadway theater for a crowd of theatergoers.
So much has changed since Spring 2007. I've graduated college, found a job, tried to figure out how to negotiate adulthood. The economy crashed, we got our first Black President, an oil company dumped millions of gallons of oil in the Gulf of Mexico. All of those external changes made this a very different show.
The opening scene, with Antonio and all of his friends dressed as Wall Street investors or bankers or lawyers, was awkward and false, as if these people knew the doom awaiting them and were trying to, well, mask it with booze and easy women and loose talk. Sound familiar? In this staging, Antonio=AIG didn't need to be said. It was understood. Portia = Goldman didn't need to be said. It was there if you were looking for it.
And the thing about this recontextualization is that it accommodates the play's racism and antisemitism and misogyny without any struggle whatsoever. The play takes place in the highest bastions of the patriarchy. Are you surprised to see these bankers and brokers sitting around in their office shooting the bull about women they've slept with, parties they've been to, pranks they've pulled? Of course not. Are you surprised that none of them are black, but most of their servants are? Of course not. (Of particular note is a fascinating casting move, making Nerissa black. When Portia utters her infamous slur about the Prince of Morocco's complexion, a light turns to Nerissa and shows her shock at the betrayal that Portia doesn't even seem to realize she's committed.) Privilege like you wouldn't believe is on display.
Antonio makes no apology at all for hating Jews. With his life on the line, he doesn't try reasoning with Shylock, just makes a resigned speech about the blackness of Shylock's heart. And it's brilliantly done because the director has shown us so well at this point that for all Shylock's evil (And make no mistake, this production does not make him anything less than a monster. Abraham's shouts in the climactic scene "I will have my bond!" are from the deepest part of his heart, one of the sincerest moments his character has.), he is desperate for the approval of these people and the right kind of appeal from Antonio probably could have worked.
One more are you surprised, because it brings out a theme of the play oft-overlooked, or at least, oft focused differently. Are you surprised that when the bankers and brokers are out for a debauched night on the town, Shylock is scared for the safety of his beautiful daughter? This is a play about sexual violence. Critics usually look at Portia, bound by her father to marry whoever wins a stupid game. But amidst his generic fear of violent antisemitic outbreaks, Shylock's fear that his daughter will be raped looms large in this staging. I see clear echoes of the story of Jacob and Dina in the Jessica plot.
Oh, that's another thing I wanted to talk about. I love that Shakespeare makes his Jew better at quoting Scripture than his Christians. Shylock's speech about Jacob and Laban is effective and reasonably accurate. Gobbo's speech about the sins of the father is theologically and scripturally garbled. But I think these two scenes are foregrounded very well here, illustrating the Biblical undertones of the story, implying the history that leads to these ancestral hatreds. The reason this play endures, the reason we still stage it despite the fact that it's so nasty and racist and easy to misstage, is that it really is an incredibly intricate and beautiful play. By keeping the notes on the caskets on screens for all of the Belmont scenes, they called attention to the way those messages "Who chooses me will get what many men desire," etc... are echoed in the Venetian storylines. From a dramatic standpoint, there is nothing whatsoever that Shakespeare got wrong in this play. It's just so deep and full of meaning.
I've said next to nothing about Shylock, probably cause that's a whole post in itself. But F. Murray Abraham is the greatest Shylock I've ever seen, still.
(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-12 04:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2011-03-13 01:00 am (UTC)