STANLEY WELLS 59

TheMerchant of Venice at the Old Vic

The Old VicMerchunt of Venice seems designed to please those who like their Shakespeare played, as they would say, ‘straight’, in an undemanding fash- ion that imposes no intellectual demands upon the audience. Adrian Vaux’s set would have occasioned no surprise half a century ago. Two tall doors define the proscenium arch. Between them, broad steps fan out on both sides of the stage. Centrally, a two-storied structure serves as the fron- tage of Shylock‘s house. It and one of the doors are covered with scaffolding, over which hang strips of cloth. Why, we ask ourselves? Is Venice crumbling already? Perhaps the cloths are bedding; if so, they are most improbably placed. The only hint of a reason comes in the scene of Jessica’s elopement, when Lorenzo sets the scaffolding creaking by rashly clambering to her window. For Belmont, doors, steps, scaffolding and clothes remain, but the house-front can give way to lace curtains, through which Portia makes her first, languid entrance, as from bedroom to breakfast room. Later the cur- tains open to show that the elegant if rickety table on which repose the all- important caskets stands before a section of Botticelli’sPrimmeru, which she has somehow acquired. Otherwise, all is eighteenth-century prettiness, unabashedly stagey. One is reminded of a Rossini opera, or, in one’s less sympathetic moments, of the final scene of a traditional pantomime, with Portia as a transformed Cinderella, Bassanio as a Prince Charming whose cream costume with gold facings uncomfortably recalls Liberace. Skilful lighting pleases the eye, but artifice prevails.

Michael Meacham’s direction is in a similar style. In group scenes, atten- tion is focused on the principal speakers; the others hang around, watching rather than participating. There are decorative touches. Portia has a couple of uniformed footmen and a simpering, crumbling, elderly retainer who takes a sentimentally benevolent interest in all that she does. During her opening conversation with Nerissa, she pours coffee and eats a peach. By and large, individual performers are left to do what they can with their roles. To a degree, the play encourages this. Generations of actors have made cameo roles of Portia’s unsuccessful suitors. Here, in Jeffery Kissoon we have a young, handsome, virile Prince of Morocco who brings with him a breath of welcome passion, exaggerated but not caricatured. The Prince of Aragon, on the other hand, played by Bernard Archard, is a grotesque, an antique, half-blind dandy, rouged and powdered, held together by his clothes, supported and guided in his totterings by a page-boy. An indulgent first-night audience thought he was a hoot; but the conception was

60 Critical Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 4

simple-minded, sustained by no real comic invention. The Gobbos, too, can be treated as personality turns. Here, one could only feel that the unfortu- nate actors were doing their best with precious little help from the direction. John Tordoff played an Old Gobbo whose blindness came and went unac- countably. As his son, Bob Hewis had a likeable freshness, but did not suc- ceed in the admittedly difficult task of suggesting a real person behind the comic routines.

Other areas of the play call for more collaborative effort. In these post- Freudian times, some thought about the nature of the relationship between Antonio and Bassanio can scarcely be avoided. Initially, it was well pre- sented. Antonio (David Sumner) was a dignified figure in early middle age. His request for information about Portia:

Well, tell me now what lady is the same To whom you swore a secret pilgrimage That you today promised to tell me of

came out of an evidently serious concern, a need to clear the air between himself and Bassanio (Michael Cochrane). Later, Salerio’s description of their parting was beautifully delivered by Stephen Jenn, with a touching sense of reverence at the depth of Antonio’s affection. The possibility of a physical relationship was not denied, but neither was it even hinted at. What was important was, quite properly, love. But at a climactic point in the trial scene, Antonio moved across to Bassanio and implanted on his lips a long kiss. Bassanio responded with no trace of pleasure or any other emotion. No one else on stage registered anything other than mild embarrassment. Nothing had led up to it, nor was it followed up. It seemed merely a gesture towards modernity.

Portia is not one of Shakespeare’s most complex heroines, but the actress needs to make some effort to weld the role’s disparate elements into a cred- ible synthesis. Maureen 0 Brien, small, vivacious, ringleted, gave an accomplished and relentlessly animated performance which skated prettily over its problems. In her opening scene, she was skittish to the point of archness, giggling and shrieking with Nerissa, affected, pouting - a thoroughly silly girL Her reactions to her unsuccessful wooers did notliing to create respect for her, and with Bassanio she was all furbelows and pearls, the very epitome of those ‘outward shows’ that he sees through to win her. If there was any ironic intent in this, I could not seek it out. As a young man, she looked credible, and her playing of the trial scene had a welcome direct- ness, but it was difficult to see her as a representative of a morality superior to Shylock’s. She seemed merely a smarter manipulator.

This may have been accentuated by an absence of conscious cleverness from Timothy West‘s Shylock. He opened quietly, a drab but respectable

The Merchant of Venice at the Old Vic 61

(Above) John Tordoff as Old Gobbo, Bob Hewis as Launcelot Gobbo and Michael Cochrane as Bassanio. (Below) Timothy West as Shylock, Lois Butlin asNerissa and Maureen O'Brien as Portia. From the Old Vic production of The Mcrchanf of Venicc, 1980, directed by Michael Meacham and designed by Adrian Vaux.

62 Critical Quarterly, vol. 22, no. 4

figure carrying a book of accounts, dignified, calm, serious. There was no vehemence in his complaints against Antonio, who was riled by them, nevertheless, Nor was any merriness apparent in Shylock or in the bond, which was sealed by a handshake. His best scene was with Salerio and Tuba1 (3.1). ’To bait fish withal’ had a quiet, inward ferocity. ‘Hath not a Jew. . .’ was measured but strong, the emotion no less apparent for being under con- trol His grief at the loss of Jessica was affecting, and he made an emotional high point of ‘It was my turquoise. I had it of Leah when I was a bachelor.’ It seemed characteristic of the production that Mr West should be more suc- cessful here, in a scene centring very much upon Shylock, than in the trial scene, which requires more complex orchestration. There, the emphasis was rather upon Antonio and the pert Portia. Mr West eschewed the temptation to make much of Shylock’s defeat. He left the play, as he had entered it, with a quiet dignity. If the production in general had been on a higher plane, this would have seemed a worthy, commendably unostentatious performance. But Mr West was the one member of the cast from whom excitement might have been hoped for in a production which badly needed it. We could have forgiven him a touch of flamboyance.

The last act went with some charm. Christopher Fulford played Lorenzo with a sympathetically youthful ardour, but turned on his passion too early, addressing the servant Stephano in the tones of rapture that he had pre- pared for Jessica, a role to which Jackie Wood-Smith brought an innocent grace.

It is good that a play so often studied in schools and elsewhere should be available in the professional theatre, but regrettable that this production presents it in so superficial a style.