Play started off badly with ten minutes of talking head & trailer before the first half and then later there was another ten minutes of it before the second half. At least in a real theatre you get this stuff in the programme and can read it to yourself if that is what you want.
Equal opportunities casting, including a Nerissa with a missing right fore-arm and a Palestinian Christian (illustrated, in a role in West Wing) as Shylock. By an odd coincidence, he studied for three years at the Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts in London (reference 1), which may have at that time been in the Mountview Road through which I used to pass on my way to buy the excellent kabanos for sale in Crouch End Broadway. Mountview Academy now in Wood Green, although it is trying for a relocate to what used to be the Town Hall at the Broadway and the kabanos are no more. You might be able to buy them at all the big supermarkets, but they are not what they used to be in the seventies at all, in the days when one still had eastern Europeans, washed up here by the second world war, running good quality delicatessens. I found Nerissa rather irritating, but Shylock much better. While his daughter, Jessica, I found oddly unconvincing.
A lot of attention had been paid to the staging, with a set which contrived to be both minimalist and pretentious, including a large pendulum swinging its way through the performance, a lot of tasteful music and a rather loud style of acting, including a Lenny Henry version of Gratiano, complete with loud shoes from Nike. And a rather girlie version of Portia; no superba, poise or presence. Perhaps the people responsible had done their apprentice time at the Globe.
Modern dress, which is not my first choice, but that was OK. The modern dress did not intrude in the way it sometimes does, probably helped in this regard by said minimalist set.
I did not care for the way that the camera panned around the audience from time to time, even to the point of looking over someone's shoulder at the programme. I suppose that the idea was to make us feel that we were in a theatre, rather than in a cinema in the Isle of Wight, but it did not work for me. I like this sort of thing better when the camera just points at the stage, and give or take a bit of zooming in and out, leaves it at that - although given the configuration of the new stage at Stratford, that may no longer work.
Nevertheless, it is a good play, more than good enough to show through this filmed version of an RSC production. And as the talking head explained, plenty to say to today's audience. In my case, for example, I was struck by the wide scope of the legal quibbling in the trial scene, despite the distraction of Shylock fiddling with his scales. What principle of legal law deals with weights and measures? When is a pound of flesh near enough a pound to meet the terms of a contract?
Quite brisk at two and a half hours including interval, twenty minutes less than the recent offering, just missed by us, at the Almeida.
Something not quite right about the sound, with it mostly but not always seeming to come out of the actors' mouths.
PS: I shall take another look at Al Pacino doing Shylock when we get home. I think the verdict will be that I prefer his version to this RSC version. Amongst other things, it has the merit of being made for the screen.
Reference 1: http://www.mountview.org.uk/.
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