By Alisha Hagey and Jason Hagey
Have you left a theatre torn and of two minds? This was my state after the finals bows of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare at the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City. I was torn. On one side I had my preconceived notions about this show (my personal biases for and against). On the other, I had the very visceral response to this particular production; which I strongly feel is exactly what I needed at this time. The Merchant of Venice is a show all about bias and preconceived notions of winner and loser. It is told from the victors’ perspective and so therefore we marginalize an already marginalized people.
If you aren’t familiar with the plot, you can summarize by saying that there are marriages, theft, money lending, sacrifice, a stirring court case … but none of these are actually the plot. These are merely points of action. Wealthy Portia is loved by penniless Bassanio. He has no money and so his friend loans him 3,000 ducats. Antonio, a merchant, has found his money tied up in his ships and so goes to Shylock, a usurer (loan shark). Shylock and Antonio are not friends and perhaps because of the animosity and contempt held for one another, Shylock strikes a bargain to not add interest to the loan but rather if it is not paid Antonio will have to give him a pound of flesh in return. As you can guess, the money is not able to be repaid within the three months and Shylock goes to the courts to demand justice. What follows is the crux of the story and the real heart of the play. Shylock loses all and is brought lower than is necessary. He is ‘put in his place’ by the same people who begged him for mercy.
Leslie Brott (left) as Antonio and Lisa Wolpe as Shylock inthe Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2018 production of The Merchant of Venice. (Photo by Karl Hugh. Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival 2018.)
While this takes place, Portia falls in love with Bassanio; Nerissa, her maid, falls in love with Gratiano (Bassanio’s friend); and another friend, Lorenzo, marries Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, who has deserted her father, stolen his money, and become a Christian. In the end, in true Shakespearean fashion, the lovers appear to get everything they want while despised Shylock is left alone, penniless, and without his God as he is forced to give up Judaism. The wealthy and indolent become wealthier, the low are brought lower, and a natural order comes to pass.
If this summary seems snarky, I assure you it is. The very tenor of Merchant rankles me. Director Melinda Pfundstein masterfully attacks all my sensibilities. She makes me uncomfortable. She lulls me to a sense of stasis with her fun pre-show of juggling, music, and revelry, engaging the audience and having them be a part of the party. Then she herself juxtaposes our merriment with many of our main characters mistreating the Jews.
It is only now that I remember stories my grandfather would tell of fighting in World War II. In the Army, it was common practice to boost morale through any means possible. My grandfather was a known artist and he was used to make political cartoons – many of them cruel. He would tell stories of the propaganda films the men were shown. Scenes of German soldiers drinking and then images of dead men. German soldiers kissing their wives, and then images of the remains of raped women. It went on like that. The justification is that we were fighting an enemy and needed to rouse the troops by any means possible. This opening was like that for me. We are partying and a part of the fun and then we are witness and again a part of the suffering. Please don’t read more into this comparison. It was just that unsettling, as I believe it was meant to be. It was effective. It was visceral. Pfundstein, I applaud you for the entire production. It is almost 24 hours later, and I am still thinking, still caught in the thralls, still unable to separate myself from the experience.
There is a great deal of humor in this play, more than I have experienced before. The humor at times was relief and at times pointed up to the very issues at hand and made me feel anger at the laughter around me and guilt for my participation. Merchant is really a show about truly imperfect people acting selfishly. I kept trying to attribute a moral center to any character in the story, but as you dig deep, each person is so very flawed. No one acts to benefit another. For a while you can say Antonio is your center but then you realize he was part of the systemic racism and his additional ‘justice’ in the end is far worse than any other punishment inflicted upon Shylock.
This brings me to the character of Shylock. Is Shylock victim or villain? Both, of course. So is every other character. There is no true protagonist. Instead I would argue that we are given a show that breaks normal convention. Yes, it is linear and has a beginning-middle-end like we expect, but there is no winner, no victor, only a series of people who are in states of suffering.
Shylock says, “I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer as a Christian is? If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?” Christian theology teaches us to love all others and this love is portioned out through cries of mercy to Shylock. Yet when he is in this same need we deny him all and take from him his humanity and denigrate him to monster. His seeking for revenge is just. It just isn’t right. Plainly, the Christians deny their own Christianity through meting out not only justice in return, but savage cruelty that shreds Shylock into nothing but fragments.
Wayne T. Carr (left) as Bassanio and Lisa Wolpe as Shylock inthe Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2018 production of The Merchant of Venice. (Photo by Karl Hugh. Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival 2018.)
I do feel that Merchant falls under the idea of a Renaissance ‘culture of paradox’ as argued by Peter G. Platt. We have a paradox to unsettle the audience in the assumptions that we naturally make, based on our experiences. Paradox can stymie discussion or stimulate self-discovery. At first, I would assume that Shakespeare himself was biased against Jews based on the derivative comments so fully and readily given by all characters in the story. Yet, the very questioning and doubt that was raised in my mind leads me to give Shakespeare more credit than previously assumed.
Venice is itself is a part of the conflict. Catholic and defiant of the Pope, a government torn in two at the time, laws that empower the majority but rely on the minority, class systems that include slavery and allow religious freedoms and ignore religious persecutions. Justice and Mercy, Revenge and Love, Jew and Christian. These are just some of the themes that are constantly in conflict within the story and none that come to a satisfactory conclusion.
USF’s website mentions that this play feels very contemporary, like it is taken from today’s headlines. It is true. The actors were in period costume and yet their motions and line delivery are contemporary. This was yet another example of juxtaposition, of binaries competing. Our current culture of extreme opposition is itself a binary competition. We have right and left, citizen and refugee, and racial inequality – this production resonates on all of these zeitgeists of American society. There is no middle ground. There is no rational discussion. We react, and we side with our ‘victors’ in what becomes moral ambiguity.
Perhaps my earlier assertion that there is no moral center is wrong. Perhaps the only moral center is Portia’s father (who is dead before the beginning of the play). He seemed to understand the world far better than anyone else – conceiving of a method to marry his daughter to someone who might actually deserve her or begin to at least. He understood the conformity between reality and shallow appearances. So he, even from the grave, tries to teach both his daughter and her suitors to act rather than just speak. The casket that allows the suitor to marry her reads, “Who chooseth me must give and hazard all he hath.” They just don’t listen or learn.
I need to talk about the incredible cast who pulled off this remarkable production. Leslie Brott (Antonio) brings a likeable and seemingly humble and human portrayal to the role. This is masterful. She has nuance and subtext. You like her, love her even, until you realized she too is just as selfish as those around her, that she too only cares about those like her and despises any of those categorized as ‘other.’ To pull off both likability while being selfish and unkind is why she is masterful.
Lisa Wolpe (Shylock) gives a seemingly deceptive performance as well. I at first interpret her Shylock as all monster but by the end I found myself siding with Shylock’s cries for justice and equality. Shylock had not been played as likeable up to this point. You fairly disliked the man. He seemed to care more for his money than his daughter, more for his revenge than his future. Yet, my heart broke for him as he was slandered by Josh Innerst (Gratiano) and Tarah Flanagan (Portia).
Innerst has to hold up a hard performance. Gratiano may be the class clown but he is not redeemable. His words and actions are all contemptible. In the courtroom as he rails against Shylock, throwing Shylock’s own words against him, you feel his sincerity. He did not play up the comedy but used anger and bitterness. This was unsettling. The audience laughed at his jeers and I wanted to stand up and yell at them. Did they not see the pain and the hate? This wasn’t funny. This was anti-Semitism at its most aware. This is the hate that we see in the world around us for those different than ourselves. This is kicking a dog that is down for sport … and the audience laughed. Innerst was able to play this off with skillful strokes.
Betsy Mugavero (left) as Nerissa and Josh Innerst as Gratiano in the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2018 production of The Merchant of Venice. (Photo by Karl Hugh. Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival 2018.)
Flanagan was also given a difficult role. How do you play the lovable and affable Portia and yet show her vindictive and cruel nature? She does, and she does it well. By the end I thought so low of her and yet she dances with her husband with a very human and happy smile. You want to joy with her but the pain and suffering on stage above the revelries won’t allow it.
Wayne T. Carr (left) as Bassanio and Tarah Flanagan as Portia in the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2018 production of The Merchant of Venice. (Photo by Karl Hugh. Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival 2018.)
Aidaa Peerzada (Jessica) gives a stirring performance as Shylock’s daughter. You believe that she feels trapped, that she wants to marry Josh Jeffers (Lorenzo). She loves him enough to deny both her father and the faith she was raised in. But this betrayal eats at her and she is trapped, a woman between two worlds. Her husband mocks her for her theft from her father, his friends belittle her for being ‘an infidel.’ She can do nothing but suffer in silence.
The entire cast deserves huge recognition. They fight against the elements in this performance. It starts as a little wind and turns into a great deal of wind, with dust flying around and into their eyes. This later becomes rain. They have to speak to be heard amongst the elements without losing character and maintaining focus. The entire ensemble is truly professional. This is one of the joys of watching in an outdoor theatre, and one of the biggest challenges. I suggest, despite whatever the weather might be in the day, bring a hoodie or a jacket with you just in case.
A scene from the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2018 production of The Merchant of Venice. (Photo by Karl Hugh. Copyright Utah Shakespeare Festival 2018.)
The world of the play could not be complete without recognizing the fantastic efforts of the design team. The set designer Apollo Mark Weaver built a magnificent set, simple and versatile. With the use of a curtain we are quickly transported from location to location. The rest of the set stays the same, yet is perfect for all settings and believable for each location. The lighting designer Michael Pasquini creates mood and magic with his illumination. As the play progresses through to its bitter and disturbing end, he complements the action on stage with every stroke. Bill Black’s costuming and hair design transform characters and fit the personalities of the personas perfectly.
What struck me most about the design of the show was the sound. Various performers would chant (or cantillate, I believe is a correct term for it). Their vocals lend strength and a depth of emotion to the competing chaos on stage. Joe Payne does a fantastic job weaving the Italian and Jewish cultures into more cohesion than the characters on stage could. His sound design is everything it needed to be, and more.
Utah Shakespeare Festival’s Merchant of Venice is a standing-ovation-worthy production. The direction is superb, the acting is layered and reflective of the director’s vision, and the design creates a cohesion that is simple and miraculous. Shakespeare takes us into a world that is full of paradox, full of pain, and full of pleasure. Again, as he so often does, Shakespeare teaches us the misuse of power, the suffering caused by selfishness, and the complexity of the human condition. Pfundstein’s interpretation of Merchant of Venice elevates Shakespeare into a realm of poignancy that will have you pondering for days afterward. As I walked away from seeing this production, I couldn’t help but think of how this play of paradoxes screams for its opposite: love. As I drove home, I recalled Fred Rogers who said, “When we love a person, we accept him or her exactly as is: the lovely with the unlovely, the strong along with the fearful, the true mixed in with the façade, and of course, the only way we can do it is by accepting ourselves that way.” I believe Merchant of Venice wants us to react by rejecting the evils of selfishness and embrace the purity of real love for all humankind.
Utah Shakespeare Festival presents The Merchant of Venice, by William Shakespeare
Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre, 195 W Center Street, Cedar City, Utah 84720
June 29 – September 6, 2018, Times and dates vary
Tickets: $20-75
Contact: 435-586-7878 or 1-800-PLAYTIX (752-9849)
Utah Shakespeare Festival Facebook Page
Synopsis of The Merchant of Venice
Study Guide into the world of The Merchant of Venice
It\\\’s a fine production, but hardly the best I\\\’ve seen (that honor would fall to the LAST USF production of Merchant with Tony Amendola as an unforgettable Shylock and a much stronger cast throughout. In particular, the stronger actress here did NOT play Portia but Nerissa). This production is \”traditiona\” in it\’s anti-Semitism while the previous production was much more even handed in bashing Christians as well as the Jews of Venice. One wonders whether Ms. Pfundstein didn\’t deliberately both a) change the tone of this production and b) cast across gender to juxtapose the two productions. I found it disheartening that many of the audience at the actors seminar with Ms. Wolpe the day after the production I saw seemed to favor this more anti-Semitic approach (not many actors would have been able to pull off Ms Wolpe\’s quite stereotypical Yiddish accent, though it did work well for her).