One of the few benefits of coronavirus is that it is possible to catch up with missed theatre productions. So as the economies of nations disintegrate, millions face unemployment and venerable companies go to the wall (I write this not knowing if this will be my last for the JC) take what solace you can from the dispiriting sight of Jewish revenge.
Yes, one of the 17 RSC shows now available on the MarqueeTV platform is Polly Findlay’s 2015 production of The Merchant of Venice starring Makram J Khoury.
The production opened as Jonathan Pryce played the role of Shylock at Shakespeare’s Globe and not long after Rupert Goold’s Casino-set version was revived at The Almeida with Ian McDiarmid taking over from Patrick Stewart in the production.
Much was made at the time about the casting of Khoury. An Arab Israeli in the role of Shylock seemed a gilt-edged opportunity to take the experience of a Jew living among Christians and an inform it with the experience of an Arab living among Jews.
But that chance was shied away from. Findlay’s modern dress production is performed in front of a towering metallic wall. The most eye catching element of Johannes Schültz’s design is a giant ball that swings throughout the play like a pendulum.
The idea must have sounded brilliant during production meetings. But its significance never emerges. Even more odd, Khoury’s Shylock dresses in am oddly informal bomber jacket
It is good to see actors avoiding tropes of Jewish dress when playing Shylock. When Stewart’s prepared to kill Antonio, the Jew covered his head with a tallit as if there existed a well-used prayer for killing Christians who have welched on loans from Jews.
But the Jew’s assimilation is half-baked here. With soft-spoken calm Khoury’s heavily accented Shylock is still very much the ‘other’ of this society. He is repeatedly spat upon by smug, villainous Christians, yet he is underpowered even in the amount of offence he takes from this treatment.
It is as if most of Findlay’s thinking about the play has been about the title role. Jamie Ballard’s Antonio is infected with a viral-like love for Jacob Fortune-Lloyd’s likeable Bessanio. Their history as lovers, which is usually only implied, is made explicit with long kisses on the lips. Antonio’s undoing therefore is not really the debt owed to Shylock so much as Bessanio’s apparent newfound attraction to members the opposite sex — or to one of them. Which brings us to Portia.
Because it is neither Ballard nor Khoury who deiver the standout performance here. It is Patsy Ferran.
In 2015 the actor had only a year previously burst onto the stage as the maid in Blithe Spirit. And it would be another three years before her stunning, award-winning performance in Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke.
Yet as Portia the qualities that made her the find of the decade back then are visible in a role that should never upstage Shylock or Antonio, but does.
There is a diffident, tremulous uncertainty to her Portia which despite, her status as an obscenely rich heiress is born out of a lovelorn personal history. She’s funny, modest and easily the cleverest person in the room.
So although in this streaming version Makram’s Shylock remains an opportunity missed, Ferran’s Portia is one that has been wonderfully grasped and preserved.
