Using a score of players from the National Theatre's permanent (for one year) company, director Trevor Nunn (who now heads the institution) has performed something of a miracle in his production of the ever-problematic Merchant of Venice, staged in the National's intimate Cottesloe venue. With imaginative vision Nunn has imprinted a unified context in which everything makes sense, if at times in a brand new way. He has set the play in the Mussolini period. With a nod to Cabaret, most of the Venetian scenes take place in a nightclub, where the Christians spend a lot of time drinking and getting tipsy -- Gratiano enters quite drunk, and Bassanio's pants have fallen down-- except for the melancholy Antonio, who sits at the piano dreamily playing the opening of Schubert's late B-flat sonata (the actor does his own playing, too). When Shylock (Henry Goodman) is at home with his daughter Jessica, he lovingly kisses a photo of his dead wife, and we hear fragments of German, Yiddish and Hebrew -- the moneylender clearly lives in an alien milieu. Yet this Shylock knows his Christians inside out and can deal with their animosity ingratiatingly and even humorously.
With a gray beard, long black coat and walking stick, Goodman is careful to wear a yarmulke under his tall hat. In the distant Belmont, Portia amuses herself by playing home movies of earlier suitors who chose the wrong casket, all in front of a huge, rather erotic mural. As the three seekers of her hand arrive to contemplate their choice, Portia kneels on a pillow each time; she even seems somewhat drawn to the Prince of Morocco, who embraces her before departing in defeat, though unimpressed by the superbly fiery Prince of Arragon, who does a hilarious Spanish dance with a guitarist in tow. When Bassanio chooses the right casket, Portia weeps with joy and there is a champagne toast all around. At one point, the eloping Jessica and Lorenzo appear in wet swimsuits. When they later lie on a moonlit bank, it is frankly a bit much to have the entire first movement of Beethoven's "Moonlight" Sonata playing as background. Nunn's handling of the climactic trial is masterly, with Derbhle Crotty's Portia as convincing in male disguise as in a gown. She doesn't just spout the "quality of mercy" speech as an aria, but incorporates it into the scene by moving around.
Shylock is compelling when he asks, "Shall I lay perjury on my soul?" But his hand trembles when he is about to carve his pound of flesh. His inflexibility leads his fellow Jew, Tubal, to sneak out of the courtroom in disgust. Throughout the show, Goodman, who is in the top echelon of British actors, makes nary a false move. The minor roles are all admirably handled -- sometimes quite freshly, as when Launcelot Gobbo delivers one speech as a stand-up comedy act into a microphone. And for once Salerio and Solanio are more than peripheral ciphers.
At the very end, Nunn has done a bit of line-juggling, and the last thing we hear is the converted Jessica singing in Hebrew with the soft sound of thunder in the distance. Not your usual happily-ever-after conclusion.
