{"id":75,"date":"2008-04-26T18:36:41","date_gmt":"2008-04-26T23:36:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/2008\/04\/26\/injustice-on-stage-in-stratford\/"},"modified":"2008-04-27T09:58:36","modified_gmt":"2008-04-27T14:58:36","slug":"injustice-on-stage-in-stratford","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/2008\/04\/26\/injustice-on-stage-in-stratford\/","title":{"rendered":"Injustice on Stage in Stratford"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve needed the several weeks since the Friday, April 4, show to achieve sufficient composure to write about the Royal Shakespeare Company’s current incarnation<\/a> of The Merchant of Venice<\/em> in Stratford-upon-Avon. The play of course is inherently incendiary. I have nothing to contribute to the longstanding debate about whether the Bard was Anti-Semitic. But I left the Courtyard Theater that night horrified at this production’s choices, with only one possible source of redemption for it in sight (and, I fear, lost to near all the inattentive audience).<\/p>\n

This production matter-of-factly illustrated every evil of a calculating Shylock. He was unfair and unsympathetic in his business dealings; he loved his daughter little, and his gold much; he would never share a table with a Gentile. Beyond the text, in the courtroom, when Shylock is about to use his knife to extract his pound of flesh, he perches above a prostrate Antonio who has his arms outstretched.<\/em> This image<\/a>, with Antonio as Christ, invokes the most pernicious of the historical calumnies against Jews.<\/p>\n

After the lamb is saved, and Shylock’s level (pointed?) “Is it the law?” is answered affirmatively, the production lightly carries on to Portia’s and Nerissa’s practical joke and the standard comedic ending of multiple nuptials. Shylock appears again only in the musical reprise, interrupting a bit of the dancing to angrily twist arms with his new son-in-law.<\/p>\n

What do director and cast hope to achieve with–what could be redemptive about– this portrayal of an irredeemable Shylock? My best speculation is that they wish to offend as thoroughly as Borat.<\/p>\n

In contrast to John Peter of The Sunday Times<\/a>, I didn’t find the production “sloppily directed,” but rather distressingly<\/em> directed.\u00a0 In contrast to Michael Billington of The Guardian<\/a>, I found nothing to “enjoy” about this excruciating production. I’m not sure I could find anything enjoyable about any production of this play. But many wisely directed productions could give me leave to depart with faith in what humanity has learned, rather than fear about what it may have not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve needed the several weeks since the Friday, April 4, show to achieve sufficient composure to write about the Royal Shakespeare Company’s current incarnation of The Merchant of Venice in Stratford-upon-Avon. The play of course is inherently incendiary. I have nothing to contribute to the longstanding debate about whether the Bard was Anti-Semitic. But I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":283,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[999,872,608,434],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-75","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anecdote","category-fiction","category-opinion","category-rhetoric"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/283"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=75"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":136,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/75\/revisions\/136"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=75"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=75"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/jjjj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=75"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}