Race Cop-out Is A Tragedy

Sun Herald

Sunday May 28, 2006

COLIN ROSE

THE MERCHANT OF VENICE

Riverside Theatres, Parramatta. Until Saturday. Tickets $25-$51. Bookings 8839 3399.

Critic's rating: 5/10

OF all the approaches to take to William Shakespeare's problematic The Merchant of Venice, the least satisfactory is to fudge the play's anti-Semitism: the elephant in the living room isn't disguised by throwing a tablecloth over it. Anna Volska, directing for the Bell Shakespeare Company, is more confident when dealing with the play's romantic comedy than she is with the enmity between Christian and Jew. It's all rather polite, a bit of a tiff rather than an age-old feud.

At a time when religious intolerance is an extremely hot, ugly and messy issue, this must count as a missed opportunity.

Robert Alexander has been a Bell stalwart for several seasons, but my pleasure in seeing this silkiest of actors step up to the role of Shylock was diminished by an attempt to inject some solemnity and sympathy into Shakespeare's horrible, and horribly funny, caricature.

Alexander is not the first to try to rehabilitate Shylock, but I am yet to be convinced that it can be done.

Michelle Doake is terrifically commanding as Portia, even if she does not quite knit together Portia's two aspects, the party girl and the formidable intellect (although try imagining a cross between Paris Hilton and Hillary Clinton and you'll see how hard this is).

I saw a preview performance with an audience of about 600 schoolchildren. It occurred to me that perhaps Volska's interpretation - its broad brushstrokes, contemporary clothing and its deflecting of the play's anti-Semitism and, for that matter, its gay overtones - had been created with young people in mind. And then I thought that the director was, unfortunately, selling them short.

This production will tour throughout NSW in June and September.CR

© 2006 Sun Herald

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