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Feb. 27th, 2022 10:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretThe Merchant of Venice with John Douglas Thompson as Shylock
I saw it at the Theater for a New Audience in Brooklyn this afternoon. Mostly I enjoyed the experience a lot. Thompson was an incredibly charismatic and moving Shylock. I felt his struggles, the way he seethed with fury at the way he was treated and the way it led him astray from his moral values until he crossed lines he could not walk back.
The problem, if we can call it that, is that he was such a dynamic presence that he sort of sucked the oxygen out of the room. Whenever he was on stage, he drew all your attention. Whenever he wasn't on stage, the show felt more sluggish.
And there was such a clarity to Thompson's performance that I understood everything he was trying to say about who Shylock was and what he wanted. The result being that I spent most of the play mentally trying to make sense of the other characters, mostly Antonio and Portia and Jessica.
-I've never quite understood the function of Antonio's (Alfredo Narciso) performance in Act I Scene 1. What is his melancholy about, what does it mean? The best answer I've seen is in the Trevor Nunn Merchant, where Antonio's melancholy is because he is desperately in love with Bassanio, and Bassanio is straight. That was definitely not the subtext here, so what was it?
One possibility is that they were playing with the idea that Antonio's melancholy is what we would call modern day major clinical depression, and Antonio spends the whole play deep in a depressive episode trying to kill himself. Why does he make a pound of flesh his bond? Because he wants to die. We notice in the final scene, the ring confrontation, that he, having escaped the Jew's tortures, immediately offers his body against as a surety against Bassanio's inevitable infidelity. He hates his body and wants to die, especially if he can be a martyr to Christ in doing so.
I think another possibility I noticed is that there's a very subtle lie in the first scene. Antonio tells Salerio and Salanio that he is not melancholy because he is anticipating his ships' return, because he has sufficient other assets that he is not reliant on their return for his fortunes.
But in the next scene he tells Bassanio that he is in fact fully invested right now, that he cannot even spare a few thousand ducats for his kinsman. His speech to Salerio was a flat out lie. He has inflated his worth to his business partners, he has overextended himself unreasonably, he has taken on too much risk. I noticed that when Shylock quotes the story of Jacob and Laban to him, he distinguishes it from usury by calling it a 'venture'. And ventures are not anti-Christian, in fact ventures are noble. But ventures are terrifying, he is sustaining way too much financial risk and there is nothing he can do but spend the entire play stewing in an ever deepening well of anxiety. Antonio's final appearance in the play concludes with Portia telling him that she has news that three of his ships have finally made it back to Venice. The play is called The Merchant of Venice and it is bookended by the melancholy speech and the return of his ships. Methinks there is structure there.
-Meanwhile, Portia (Isabel Arraiza) and Jessica (Danaya Esperanza), who were increasingly set up as foils the more the play ran on. Unlike Jessica, there is investment in who Portia is in the first few acts, but nonetheless it's not much. Hers is not a particularly young Portia, there is something of the Girlboss in the way she is costumed. She strikes you as the kind of person who doesn't actually want to have any of her suitors win her hand in marriage, she is comfortable running things at Belmont, and she is comfortably bossing around her servants and not having anyone challenge her. This is the most standoffish I've ever seen a Portia/Nerissa relationship.
We don't see anything of significance of Jessica before intermission, but after intermission they took a lot of time to show her increasing realization that running off with Lorenzo is a mistake. Shakespeare gives Jessica and Lorenzo a punch-punch-kiss teasing scene at Belmont before Portia returns- in this version they play it straight, with no teasing and no reconciliation. Jessica quickly tires of Lorenzo telling her what to do and how to feel- she is her own woman, like Portia, After all, she is the one who created the plan to escape Shylock, she wants to be an independent woman and Lorenzo does not appear capable of letting her.
Similarly, the reconciliations of Portia and Bassanio and Nerissa and Gratiano are played without resolution-- the play ends with Nerissa slapping Gratiano and storming out, showing that in this play's world all of the men have disappointed their women. The end. Except...
Except for the play pulling the oh-so-trendy move of ending the play with a Hebrew prayer. In the Munby Merchant it's S'lach Lanu Avinu. In Nunn's it's Eishet Chayil. Which was it this time? Kol Nidrei. Apparently because so much of the play is about oaths and bonds, and Kol Nidrei is about nullifying oaths. This sort of works on its own, it's kind of a clever idea, but what elevated it to emotionally devastating and brought me to tears is that it's both Shylock and Jessica (in separate places) reciting it in unison. Realizing that the most important bond in the play is the one between Shylock and Jessica, and therefore showing them both realizing that they have failed each other and trying desperately to ask God to help them fix it. Oh, my heart.
I saw it at the Theater for a New Audience in Brooklyn this afternoon. Mostly I enjoyed the experience a lot. Thompson was an incredibly charismatic and moving Shylock. I felt his struggles, the way he seethed with fury at the way he was treated and the way it led him astray from his moral values until he crossed lines he could not walk back.
The problem, if we can call it that, is that he was such a dynamic presence that he sort of sucked the oxygen out of the room. Whenever he was on stage, he drew all your attention. Whenever he wasn't on stage, the show felt more sluggish.
And there was such a clarity to Thompson's performance that I understood everything he was trying to say about who Shylock was and what he wanted. The result being that I spent most of the play mentally trying to make sense of the other characters, mostly Antonio and Portia and Jessica.
-I've never quite understood the function of Antonio's (Alfredo Narciso) performance in Act I Scene 1. What is his melancholy about, what does it mean? The best answer I've seen is in the Trevor Nunn Merchant, where Antonio's melancholy is because he is desperately in love with Bassanio, and Bassanio is straight. That was definitely not the subtext here, so what was it?
One possibility is that they were playing with the idea that Antonio's melancholy is what we would call modern day major clinical depression, and Antonio spends the whole play deep in a depressive episode trying to kill himself. Why does he make a pound of flesh his bond? Because he wants to die. We notice in the final scene, the ring confrontation, that he, having escaped the Jew's tortures, immediately offers his body against as a surety against Bassanio's inevitable infidelity. He hates his body and wants to die, especially if he can be a martyr to Christ in doing so.
I think another possibility I noticed is that there's a very subtle lie in the first scene. Antonio tells Salerio and Salanio that he is not melancholy because he is anticipating his ships' return, because he has sufficient other assets that he is not reliant on their return for his fortunes.
My ventures are not in one bottom trusted,
Nor to one place; nor is my whole estate
Upon the fortune of this present year:
Therefore my merchandise makes me not sad.
But in the next scene he tells Bassanio that he is in fact fully invested right now, that he cannot even spare a few thousand ducats for his kinsman. His speech to Salerio was a flat out lie. He has inflated his worth to his business partners, he has overextended himself unreasonably, he has taken on too much risk. I noticed that when Shylock quotes the story of Jacob and Laban to him, he distinguishes it from usury by calling it a 'venture'. And ventures are not anti-Christian, in fact ventures are noble. But ventures are terrifying, he is sustaining way too much financial risk and there is nothing he can do but spend the entire play stewing in an ever deepening well of anxiety. Antonio's final appearance in the play concludes with Portia telling him that she has news that three of his ships have finally made it back to Venice. The play is called The Merchant of Venice and it is bookended by the melancholy speech and the return of his ships. Methinks there is structure there.
-Meanwhile, Portia (Isabel Arraiza) and Jessica (Danaya Esperanza), who were increasingly set up as foils the more the play ran on. Unlike Jessica, there is investment in who Portia is in the first few acts, but nonetheless it's not much. Hers is not a particularly young Portia, there is something of the Girlboss in the way she is costumed. She strikes you as the kind of person who doesn't actually want to have any of her suitors win her hand in marriage, she is comfortable running things at Belmont, and she is comfortably bossing around her servants and not having anyone challenge her. This is the most standoffish I've ever seen a Portia/Nerissa relationship.
We don't see anything of significance of Jessica before intermission, but after intermission they took a lot of time to show her increasing realization that running off with Lorenzo is a mistake. Shakespeare gives Jessica and Lorenzo a punch-punch-kiss teasing scene at Belmont before Portia returns- in this version they play it straight, with no teasing and no reconciliation. Jessica quickly tires of Lorenzo telling her what to do and how to feel- she is her own woman, like Portia, After all, she is the one who created the plan to escape Shylock, she wants to be an independent woman and Lorenzo does not appear capable of letting her.
Similarly, the reconciliations of Portia and Bassanio and Nerissa and Gratiano are played without resolution-- the play ends with Nerissa slapping Gratiano and storming out, showing that in this play's world all of the men have disappointed their women. The end. Except...
Except for the play pulling the oh-so-trendy move of ending the play with a Hebrew prayer. In the Munby Merchant it's S'lach Lanu Avinu. In Nunn's it's Eishet Chayil. Which was it this time? Kol Nidrei. Apparently because so much of the play is about oaths and bonds, and Kol Nidrei is about nullifying oaths. This sort of works on its own, it's kind of a clever idea, but what elevated it to emotionally devastating and brought me to tears is that it's both Shylock and Jessica (in separate places) reciting it in unison. Realizing that the most important bond in the play is the one between Shylock and Jessica, and therefore showing them both realizing that they have failed each other and trying desperately to ask God to help them fix it. Oh, my heart.