First Transmitted 17th December 1980
 |
Warren Mitchell must have a pound of John Franklyn-Robbins' flesh |
Director: Jack Gold
The second production of the Jonathan Miller years is a cold
and forensic production of The Merchant
of Venice, full of muted colours and distant characters. It’s also a clear
continuation of style from Taming of the
Shrew – theatrical in design and style and with a clear interpretation of
the play at its heart. What it also does well, however, is not to force that
interpretation on the viewer.
This is despite the fact that it seems fairly clear to me
that Jack Gold pretty much dislikes nearly all the characters in the play. All
the Christian characters are presented throughout as cold, rather empty
individuals, imperious and slightly distant – to the extent that some of them
barely exhibit clear characteristics at all. In fact what is striking is what
little sense of their personalities you get here. It seems very much a
directorial decision to accentuate this part of Shakespeare’s writing.
Shylock is such a vibrant, colourful character, capable of
both feeling and villainy, that it often seems (particularly today) the
Christian characters are comparatively trivial. Certainly the final act of the
play, revolving around the exchange of rings and various comic schemes, seems
anticlimatic and a dramatic switch in tone from what has come before. Now I
think there is complexity behind these characters, but to me this production
decides to accentuate this comparative blankness. 
Shylock is a character who dominates the play and is the one
character in the play truly unique to the cannon. It is impossible to imagine
Shylock being dropped into any other play without changing the nature of the
play itself – it is hard to imagine any other character having that impact. He
is so unique – and historical attitudes to Judaism are such a controversial
issue – that every production runs the risk of being accused of anti-Semitism
if any of Shylock’s many negative elements are portrayed. This production was
nearly banned in America – despite the fact that Gold, Miller and Mitchell are
all Jewish. Productions can bend over backwards to reposition Shylock as a hero
(or anti-hero), a man “more sinned against than sinning”, who only wants to
demonstrate the injustice of Venetian society. 
Such contorted thinking takes us away from what the play is
trying to do. Shylock is, really, the villain of the play. Now he’s no Jew of Malta – he’s a regular Joe,
trying to keep his head above water, fed up with being treated like filth, who
responds to taunts and humiliation with a desire to return it with interest. That’s
understandable, but many of the actions are inherently negative – there is a
reason why his daughter is so eager to flee him. His driving intention
throughout the final acts of the play is essentially to murder Antonio. Pained
by the loss of his daughter he takes the (surprise) opportunity of Antonio
defaulting on the loan to take revenge on everyone who has wronged him. It’s
understandable why he does it – but such murderous glee is hard to sympathise
with.
Having directed Merchant
of Venice in the past, I could go on (at length) about the fascinating
nature of this character. But this is about Gold and Mitchell! Warren
Mitchell’s performance is most striking in its lack of judgement on this
character. His Shylock is more comic than any other performance I’ve seen. Grubby,
short and a little unclean Mitchell performance is also intensely Jewish in
voice, manner and gesture. Throughout the other characters surround and tower
over him. It’s a performance that I think of as being “line-by-line” – Mitchell
plays every line as it is and avoids stamping a clear interpretive intention on
Shylock – unlike other productions, where every line and action is twisted in
order to present a particular idea (usually positive) of the character. There
is also a wonderful sense that Shylock plays up his Jewish characteristics when
in conversation with the other Venetians in order to unsettle, unnerve or even
annoy them – when addressing the camera directly he is notably calmer, stiller
and more relaxed.
This is also a Shylock who laughs – and a fair bit. The
laughter is often artificial – in A1 S3 it’s clearly used as a wheedling, even
ingratiating tool – a defence to Antonio to demonstrate that his abuse does not
hurt him. The jovial manner is also used as a cover to get pointed sharpness
towards the people he is speaking to (he does this in A1 S3 when pointing out
Antonio’s hypocrisy in asking for a loan). Laughter is a tool to allow Shylock
to convince himself he is in control and, as is clear in A2 S5, to dominate
those around him like Gobbo and Jessica (who, despite his concern for her, he
is notably distant and self-preoccupied when talking to). Laughter is used
again when confronting Salerio and Solanio in A3 S1, where their aggressive
(and openly racist) bullying is met with Shylock laughing along in an almost
manic way before flinging his famous “Hath not a Jew” speech with an increasingly
pained, revengeful fury back at them.
Which brings us to the trial scene – always destined to be
the centre of attention for any production of Merchant. Mitchell’s Shylock here actively enjoys the position of
power he has over the Christians but still with a touch of the comic about him.
There are moments of gentleness and a tinge of sadness when remembering his
lost daughter, but Shylock’s potential nobility is continuously undercut
throughout by his scuttling glee, his obvious delight at the prospect of the
act of murder. The court may clearly be rigged – and Douglas Wilmer’ excellent
performance of the Duke carries all the weight of a system that won’t allow
itself to be seen as fixed even when it so clearly is – but Shylock himself is
hardly either completely sympathetic or in any way particularly noble. He’s a trodden down,
trampish man who is given the chance of cocking a snook at his betters.
It’s a largely underplayed scene surprisingly – it’s kept
low and quiet, perhaps matching Gemma Jones’ cold Portia – and it would be
better if there was more sense of community or crowd reaction from the many
onlookers of the trial. But its focus on the lead does mean that Shylock’s
eventual breaking – his quiet “let me go” is the voice of the eternal victim
returned to his victim status – carries a neat emotional force that is
reflected later in the play in Antonio’s own isolation. It would be hard to
take a sense away of a good man, even while being possible to feel sorry for
Shylock. The violence of his forced conversion – and the sudden switch in
character to a small man eager to escape as quickly and easily as he can –
makes Shylock a tragic figure, even if the victim of self-inflicted wounds.
This review has placed a lot of the focus on Shylock, but
then I feel this is the intention of the production as well. Shylock’s vibrancy
is accentuated by the coolness of everything else. With the set largely made of
blues and greys, reflected in the largely muted colours of the costumes and
even the paleness of the actors. The artificial setting and backdrop makes
Venice seem even more constructed and controlled, with the backsheets used (and
so undisguised) keeping the world disconnected and unreal. It’s telling that
the Shylock scenes occur in the most ‘realistic’ locations while Portia’s house
(the centre of the Christian characters’ world) is the most stylised. Gold’s
stylised use of imagery also yields some results through the framing of the Christian
characters – particularly in a striking image of the three happy couples at the
end, all embracing as if to hammer home their essential uniformity.
This distance is seen in the performances as well. Gemma
Jones’ Portia is a cold, rather distant figure. She may relax slightly with
Susan Jameson’s engaging Nerissa but she is still an unknowable figure, her
sharp intelligence and manipulative ability suggesting that she is bound for
disappointment in John Nettles’ handsome but empty Bassanio, a man here almost
devoid of imagination and wit. Jones’ grand tone works well for the trial scene
– and Portia has rarely seemed as cold and unfeeling as she does in parts of
this trial scene (although Gold handles the comedic asides with Nerissa during
this scene with an assured touch and allows the comedy).
John Franklyn-Robbins’ Antonio is a tortured, lonely figure
unable to truly relax or relate to people – martyrism at the end is a tempting opportunity
to lend his life meaning. Gold plays the homosexual subtext of the relationship
between him and Bassanio very openly – though it is suggested that Bassanio is
very much aware that affection for Antonio can yield prizes. Franklyn-Robbins
brings the age of Antonio out very well, and Gold’s decision to leave him
isolated and alone in Portia’s house at the end – lost between two worlds – brings
out the bittersweet nature of the ending, also echoed in Jessica’s unease at Shylock’s
loss of his land. The final image of Antonio is also striking for the
replication it makes of his pose from the very start – the futility of Antonio’s
journey and the lack of progression for the character (still in the same place
emotionally as he was at the start) has rarely been so well expressed.
For the other performances, John Rhys-Davies is a stand out
as an energetic Salerio, but others – especially Enn Reitel’s Gobbo – are less
successful. Leslee Udwin has her moments as Jessica but the relationship between
her and Richard Morant’s Lorenzo is played fairly straight and without complexity. Kenneth Cranham misses a trick as a slightly
under played Gratiano.
Gold’s production in a stylised and artificial Venice is an
interesting mixture. While in Shylock it is happy to present a nuanced and
fairly open view of a character so often twisted into positivity, it then
weights the dice slightly by making the other prominent characters considerably
colder and less interesting both in contrast to Shylock and to the writing of
the original play. While it’s great that this production is confident enough to
present its lead as a very shabby figure, it seems a shame that it couldn’t do
the same with the others. Gold does use the budget constraints very
effectively, and his embracing of a clearly artificial world reminiscent of
cool late-Renaissance painting (Titian springs to mind) is a striking continuation
of the style Miller had introduced. But the
contrast between the life of the Shylock scenes and the coldness of the
Christian scenes is finally too great to keep the audience really engaged in
the storylines of a significant number of the cast.
Conclusion
Some very good scenes and a fine performance by Warren
Mitchell, but the rest of the cast selflessly sacrifice themselves to the
conceit of the production. The development of the rest of the characters, except
perhaps Antonio, is not revelatory but does draw a clear parallel between Shylock
and the rest. It’s not the greatest production of the play that you will ever
see but it’s a very intelligent production by a very experienced TV director
that uses the constraints of the media to excellent effect. I enjoyed and liked
its embracing of stylisation – but it’s too cold a production for it to be
anyone’s favourite.
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