EXPLANATIONS or IMPOSITIONS
thoughts on Trevor Nunn’s production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’.
Cottesloe Theatre, August 1999.
Shakespeare sells. In today’s climate he represents
safety and familiarity. But what the theatre needs is danger and
discovery…Aimé Césaire, a formidable Martinique poet, not
only argued that Prospero is the complete totalitarian; he also
rewrote Shakespeare’s play from the point of view of Caliban,
re-inventing him as Malcolm X. Wouldn’t it be exciting to see it in
The Swan alongside The Tempest? One could, in fact, imagine a whole season of such parallels, with
Wesker’s Shylock offered as an accompaniment to
Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.
Michael Billington. Guardian. 22 February 1998
On the 1st June 1999 Trevor Nunn, in response to my suggestion that he mount my play
Shylock in tandem with his production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’, replied that there was…
…a production to be done of Shakespeare’s problematic play which would in large
measure express and encapsulate your play …I am two weeks away from opening that
production .. the process has been exhilarating and purgative, discovering things in
Shakespeare’s text which have always been there but which I suspect have lain
undisturbed and unrecognised …
Of course I had to see it. The house was full, the applause enthusiastic. But for me the
‘problem’ of Shakespeare’s play was compounded by Nunn’s contortionist production, one
exemplifying the temptations and pitfalls confronting the director’s craft. He sets ‘The
Merchant of Venice’ in the 1930s.
I reach for a note I wrote three years ago in my ‘notebook’.
Perhaps the first thing that should be observed of the theatre is that it is endowed with an
enormous power to cheat. To cheat is not the same as to pretend.
The actor is called upon to ‘pretend’, to pretend to be who they are not. The setdesigner is called upon to pretend, to pretend that one flat is an entire room. The
writer is called upon to pretend - that two hours can represent a character’s life time
…The director is the only one who is not called upon to pretend - his/hers is another
function: to prevent the actor, designer, and writer from cheating.
All three have resources, or can call upon resources, that will enable them to cheat.
Cheating is using the powerfully emotive elements of sound, lighting, voice, music,
colour, and shape to persuade an audience that something significant or substantial is
taking place on stage when in fact it isn’t. Paradoxically, although the director’s
function is to prevent his team cheating - rather like the police inspector’s job is to
prevent crime - yet the director is in the key position to cheat more than the others, just
as the police inspector, because of his authority, is in a key position to commit crime
without detection.
To be specific: the director can encourage the set designer to create a vast
impressive set which can communicate an importance about the events unfolding even
though those events are anecdotal, without importance; he can call from the lighting
designer a sequence of lights which create an atmosphere the text doesn’t really
substantiate; he can direct the actor to pause, look, and dramatically poise his body
to make it seem that something profound is taking place when in fact nothing has been
said or happened to earn that moment of apparent profundity. And of course the
director can use that most potent of all the art forms, music, to help make it seem that
something ominous or tragic is taking place when in fact nothing is.
To do all these things is to cheat.
Despite Nunn’s letter to me suggesting he had discovered things present which had lain
undisturbed I found little that had not been ‘discovered’ before. Jonathan Miller set his
production of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in Victorian capitalism to show Shylock was simply
a capitalist like all the others; David Thacker set his in Yuppy Land for similar reasons.
Nunn seems to have set his production in a period which he wants to suggest is decadent,
bawdy, brutal and money-grabbing. It could be Germany of the 30s but in that period
decadence was the healthy pursuit alongside unhealthy Nazism.
Nunn is not only a clever director he is also a writer’s director – which makes him my kind of
director, one usually interested in explaining the text rather than imposing his own concept
upon the text. So I was disappointed to discover that with ‘The Merchant of Venice’ of all
plays he’d done just that – imposed!
There are of course some splendidly inventive moments like setting scenes in a café where
cabaret takes place thus allowing two women to sing a song that is so good one forgives it
looking as though it came out of the musical ‘Cabaret’. The café also serves to highlight
characteristics Nunn wants to impose on Bassanio and his friends who keep skipping off
without paying their bills. One amusing moment reminded me of David Suchet’s Shylock in
John Barton’s unpleasant production at the R.S.C many years ago. In the court scene where
Portia enters and asks: Which is the merchant here? and which the Jew? Suchet, small and
very Jewish looking alongside the tall, Aryan actor playing Antonio, gives a little snort of
contempt that Portia can’t see for herself who is who. In Nunn’s production, similarly, all of
Antonio’s friends groan at the question as though to say ‘what kind of nelly have we here to
help Antonio’s cause – ‘he’ can’t even see the man is wearing a skull cap and Jewish scarf.’
Other pieces of invention are unhappy, like presenting the prince of Aragon as a Flamenco
dancer speaking with a cod Spanish accent on top of difficult Shakespearean language thus
rendering him incomprehensible. Sadly, his caricature performance – replete with a little
Flamenco dance - brought forth applause from an audience intelligent-looking enough to
have known better. In fact a lot of the dialogue was lost because of bad diction or actors
speaking with their backs to half the audience. Henry Goodman as Shylock, and Derbhle
Crotty as Portia gave fine, bold, audible performances, as did Alexander Hanson as Bassanio,
though he looked like a bland stockbroker of whom the effervescent Portia would tire in a
short while.
Nunn’s determined efforts to sanitise Shylock lead him into all sorts of confusing moments. To
help the sanitisation he, like Thacker, conveniently rearranged and cut scenes and lines. Not as
many as Thacker did who repositioned Jessica’s elopement and thievery so that these alone
become the reason for Shylock’s fury. In Thacker’s production the first lines of Shylock are
gone completely which announce the intention of the play: ‘If I can catch him once upon the hip
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him.’ Nunn positions this last line at the end of the first
act, well after Jessica has run off with Shylock’s ducats and his wife’s ring so that, like Thacker,
he contorts the plot to make Jessica’s behaviour the sole reason for Shylock’s thirst for blood and
revenge.
As in my play Nunn makes Portia angry with the decisions of the court. She looks angrily at
Antonio when he asks for Shylock to become a Christian. But whereas both text and
relationships in my play justify Portia’s anger, in Nunn’s production her anger comes from no
logical place, and even more confusingly she must at the end of the play be nice to her lover’s
good friend for whom not long previously she was made to show contempt.
As confusing is the moment when, before the knife is positioned at his chest, and Bassanio is
embraced farewell by Antonio who asks to be commended to his wife: ‘Say how I loved you,
speak me well in death …’ Portia, disguised as the lawyer, looks on seeming to realise there
was a homosexual relationship between her husband-to-be and this man. (The homosexual
possibilities were explored in Terry Hands’ excellent R.S.C production, I forget the year.)
Poor Portia has to return to Bassanio’s arms after all this, and the actress, brilliant though she
is, doesn’t seem to know how to behave now that she’s been made aware her husband is bi-
sexual and that his lover is a sadistic bigot. In my play she knows exactly how she will
behave because everything that has gone before substantiates her anger. She is on the side of
Shylock and Antonio who I conceived as friends, and when Shylock has been stripped of his
wealth and is off to live his last days in Jerusalem, she tells a sad Antonio (bereft of his
friend) that she will…
… Honour my father’s wishes, marry the man who chose lead, look to what must be
grown...I’ll fill my house with poets and philosophers, and politicians who are poets
and philosophers. Bassanio will come to know his place, accept it, or leave it. I am
to be reckoned with you know, not merely dutiful …
Portia is not the only character confused in Nunn’s production, there’s poor Jessica, too. It is
obvious in Shakespeare’s play that she hates her father and wishes to flee from him into
Lorenzo’s arms but in a short time, for no reason offered in the text or from anything that’s
happened, she is sad and regretful, which is all part of the cheating process for, as my ‘note’
implies, you can make an actor play sadness and regret even though nothing in the play
prompts such melancholy, and you can find moments between which such melancholy can be
inserted.
The cheating persists into act five, after Shylock has been shamed and destroyed, when
Jessica and Lorenzo are obviously besotted with each other, and Jessica is playing the
woman’s game of ‘you don’t really love me’ in order to attract greater ardour from her lover
‘…In such a night did young Lorenzo swear he loved her well, stealing her soul with many
vows of faith, and ne’er a true one’, Nunn directs her to deliver those words at their face
value, to make it seem as though she’s made a mistake. And when the musicians play music
Nunn diminishes the beautiful truth of ‘I am never merry when I hear sweet music’ – a
familiar experience for many of us who feel strange sadness in the presence of beauty – and
makes it appear as confirmation of her mistake. She weeps with a dread which he, poor
Lorenzo, can’t understand in the way men are supposed not to understand women’s tears
from seemingly nowhere.
Jessica’s forced melancholy is held till the end, pervading and cleverly commenting on all the
dreadful jocularity which follows to do with Portia and Nerissa upbraiding their men over a ring.
And though Shakespeare’s text has them leaving the stage in order to go make early morning
love, with bawdy talk of soreness and rings, Nunn has them remain in sad couples listening to a
wretched Jessica sing a Jewish song we’d heard her sing earlier with her father. Lorenzo, her
husband to be, kneels down to her wondering – who is this woman I’ve chosen for a wife? The
moment teeters on the edge of shmultz.
My text also calls for a sad song to be sung at the end, but it’s a sad Spanish Sephardic song
sung by Nerissa to link the sad ruins of the court scene to the last Belmont scene of loss and
mistake, and its melancholy has been earned by every thing that’s happened. Jessica’s
melancholy in Nunn’s production has not been earned by anything she’s done or said, and
certainly doesn’t belong to the jovial mood of celebration implied by the text. Everything that
Shakespeare has given to his characters points to gaiety and gratitude: Antonio’s life has been
saved and, what luck, three of his ships have come home safe; the Christian women have
forgiven their men for parting with their rings; love, honour, wealth have been tangibly
restored. Nunn ignores all this in order to impose his ‘concept’. Despite whatever the text
says, no matter that nothing in the writing supports the concept, Jessica will be sad, Shylock
will be remembered., melancholy will be imposed.
I’m a puritan in art. I believe everything has to be earned – each tear, each laugh, each death.
Nunn imposes a mood upon the play which nowhere is earned by the text or by what has
taken place, finding gaps to be filled with moody silences which the play cannot substantiate.
The cheating reaches giddy heights when his Portia delivers her ‘Quality of mercy’ speech.
She sits next to Shylock as though talking privately to a naughty boy whom she’s trying to
persuade out of his naughtiness while he, Shylock, sits, just like the naughty child, with his
head bowed to the floor, nervously rubbing his forehead, looking as though he’s on the verge
of being shamed out of his stubbornness. At the very least he seems to be in a quandary. He
struggles and struggles in the gap between the end of Portia’s speech and his next line. The
silence is held for a long while. Is he having second thoughts? Why, the Jew might be
human after all. But no. His next line has to come: My deeds upon my head! I crave the
law, The penalty and forfeit of my bond. But Nunn, by having Shylock look to the ground
and rub his forehead as though in an agony of indecision, has cheated and mislead us to think
Shylock has doubts about craving the law and the forfeit of his bond.
Finally the cheating turns absurd. Portia declares that Antonio must prepare his bosom for
the knife. Shylock whoops in glee. O noble judge! O excellent young man! She asks him to
have some surgeons standing by to stem the blood lest he bleed to death. But the Shylock
who acted with seemingly nerve-racking doubts a few moments earlier, trying to make us
think he might be human after all (he didn’t voice them, he couldn’t, Shakespeare didn’t give
him any lines of doubt to voice), seems now to have forgotten doubt, and asks: Is it so
nominated in the bond? Suddenly he can’t wait to start cutting. How swiftly his doubts flew!
We pause to have a few declarations of love between Bassanio and Antonio (and for the sake
of hanging on to the plot there is a comic pause in the midst of these ghastly happenings to
make mention of rings and unforgiving wives), and then Portia, despite knowing she’s got a
trick up her sleeve, leads Shylock on and allows Antonio’s fear to be stretched across
agonising minutes. A pound of that same merchant’s flesh is thine …Shylock whoops again.
Most rightful judge! Portia continues stretching the agony … The law allows it, and the court
awards it. Shylock is still whooping. Most learned judge! a sentence, come prepare.
But he’s not whooping in behaviour quite as much as Shakespeare’s words imply. Nunn is
still manipulating Shakespeare’s character, contorting him to play out his concept. ‘Listen!’
the concept is saying, ‘those whooping words are being uttered with uncertainty. Why,
there’s honour in the old Jew after all.’ And then comes the longest cheat of all. Shylock
holds the knife (it seems like forever) in front of Antonio’s chest, moving forward to cut then
moving back as though doubt assailed him again. First of one mind then of another. The
doubts won’t go away. The knife hovers. The Jew may be human after all. He is, he is not,
he is, he is not, he is … he is … but no, finally, he most certainly is not. He’s made up his
mind. Revenge will be his. He’s going to cut. At which point Portia saves the day – at least
for everyone except poor old Shylock. Tarry a little, there is something else … Tarry?
Tarry? That’s all Shylock has been doing – tarrying. With his doubts, tarrying, tarrying.
She cautions him famously: This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood. Foiled! … nor
cut thou less nor more but just a pound of flesh … Poor, wretched Jew.
But what about poor wretched Antonio who has been made by Shakespeare to wait in awful
suspense to know his fate? After all Portia knew from the start that the bond made no sense,
she could have saved Antonio a lot of angst by letting him know this as soon as she entered
the court room. And then, after the writer, along comes the director who stretches the agony
even longer by having Shylock act out his protracted, silent hesitancy – a hesitancy for which
there is absolutely no substance in the text. It is an imposed hesitancy.
And what about this question of the Jew and revenge? Shakespeare has him saying – very
persuasively and appealingly: If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his sufferance be by
Christian example? – why revenge! The villainy you teach me I will execute, and it shall go
hard but I will better the instruction. But Jews are the least revengeful people in the world.
The sanctity of human life – because it was created in God’s image - is at the centre of Jewish
teaching. Six million gassed, and do we hear of bombs planted by Jews in Germany? Do we
hear of innocent Germans gunned down in their restaurants? Are there any known revenges
by Jews on the Poles and the Russians for countless pogroms of the past? My mother never
taught me revenge. On the contrary, Jewish parents whisper to their children: don’t be like
them! Those cruel goyim, don’t be like them! Shakespeare got it utterly wrong. His Shylock
expresses the most un-Jewish thought of all; the Jew is commanded not to behave in the
inhuman way others behave. He doesn’t always listen of course but it remains the driving
force behind most Jewish thought and action. Shylock’s call for revenge belongs less to the
playwright’s character than to the playwright cannily unable to resist a good dramatic line of
thought regardless of its ethnic veracity.
http://www.arnoldwesker.com/