The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare’s Globe, London — review

After Shylock fails to win his pound of flesh, he disappears. Then a long scene ensues in which the young lovers kiss and make up. Curtain. On paper, that is.

But Jonathan Munby’s production of The Merchant of Venice includes a coda to these jolly frolics. Under extreme duress, Shylock converts to Christianity and his penitent daughter Jessica kneels centre stage and wails in Hebrew. William Shakespeare did not write this coda — and he missed a trick for this is the miserable highlight of the night.

Jonathan Pryce displays a finely textured Shylock. He can be witty, flinty, cringing, hurt — sometimes all at once. When he wheedles — as the moneylender must at times — his voice quavers like an ailing goat. He is a victim. And the villains are those who persecute old Shylock for his faith.

And that’s just about everyone. Antonio (Dominic Mafham) is played as a gloomy brute; Lorenzo (Ben Lamb) is a humourless jock; and Bassanio (Daniel Lapaine) is well loved by his posh mates, but a nasty oaf at heart. Rachel Pickup’s Portia is more nuanced, but neurotic and a snob. In court, she patronises Shylock to no real purpose.

The rest tend towards buffoonery — the best of whom is David Sturzaker’s Gratiano: louche and quite endearing, he enters drunk and puking.

By the end of the first half, you hate almost everyone but Shylock. Which is wrong. On paper, Shylock is morally ambivalent. He is bitter and vengeful; he harms and he is harmed. Let him be ambivalent and the audience will doubt themselves — do I dislike “the Jew” for the way he acts or the way he prays? Cast every gentile as a racist lout and you freeze doubt out.

Munby’s show is about anti-Semitism. But Shakespeare did not write a play about anti-Semitism, he wrote one that included it. (He also wrote a play in which Shylock’s daughter would never wail for her daddy because she hates him.) This is a decent production — with a seductive, superficial (and basically preposterous) coda — of a play inspired by The Merchant of Venice.

To June 7, shakespearesglobe.com