Review: Merchant of Venice with guitar and lights dimmed (From Hampshire Chronicle)

Review: Merchant of Venice with guitar and lights dimmed

10:26am Thursday 10th January 2008

• Print
• Email
• Share

ELECTRICITY surrounds the performances of Eve-Marie Akers and Marianne Permaul in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, now playing at the Theatre Royal in Winchester.

Confident Eve-Marie, as rich and desirable Portia, acts with a realism that immediately tells the audience they are in the hands of an expert.

Marianne, as Portia's lady in waiting, is just as talented, and when the two are together they giggle with a naturalness that is a joy.

Another big asset in this half-professional, half-amateur production is a powerful performance from Benedict Francis, as tragic Shylock, a Jewish moneylender who flips from quietly-spoken accountant-type to a thundering giant scarred by a lifetime of prejudice and humiliation.

Benedict is also the director of the play and the founder and boss of Tribe Theatre, the company putting on this show as its debut production.

In the programme, he writes that Tribe was started to help the education and development of both professional and amateur actors, encouraging a sharing of ideas.

He presents Merchant of Venice in traditional style with gorgeous costumes that could pass for 16th century Italy.

For much of the play, though, the voluminous flowing dresses are kept in semi-darkness by lighting barely brighter than candles, which emphasises the gloomy side of what was the trade capital of Europe.

To a modern audience, this is Shakespeare's most controversial play, because it caricatures Jewish Shylock as greedy and vindictive, and invites the audience to laugh at him.

So, like most modern directors, Benedict emphasises that Shylock's behaviour is the understandable result of Christian oppression.

In the title role, Alistair Cope competently arouses our fear and sympathy when Shylock produces a knife and doggedly insists on his pound of the merchant's flesh, as the agreed payment when loan collateral sinks at sea.

The rich notes from a Spanish guitar, strummed up in the circle by Stanley Homer, move the action from scene to scene in pleasurable style, and the production starts and ends impressively with melancholy Jewish song.

The Merchant of Venice is at the Theatre Royal at 7.30 every night until Saturday, January 12. Tickets (£12, concessions £8) from the box office, on 01962 840440.

Review by George Hayter

• Print
• Email
• Share