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‘Merchant’ trades on timeless themes
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IN honor of the 400th anniversary of the death of Shakespeare, London’s Globe Theater is presenting its 2015 production of “The Merchant of Venice” at the Oriental Art Center in Shanghai this weekend.
On a global tour that includes Beijing and Guangzhou, Tony Award winner Jonathan Pryce plays Shylock, and Rachel Pickup takes the role of Portia.
The play tells the tale of a 16th Venetian merchant who borrows from a miserly Jewish moneylender and then finds he can’t repay the loan. This story of love and avarice is one of the Bard’s best-known plays, with memorable speeches such as “hath not a Jew eyes” and “the quality of mercy.”
“As an actor I either say yes too quickly or no too quickly, so I asked for a little bit of time to read the play again,” said Pryce at a talk with Pickup and associate director Kevin Bennett in Shanghai last Thursday. “Reading it in 2015, when the world was seeing resurgence in racism and anti-Semitism and the backlash to the immigration flow into Europe, it seemed a relevant play for today.”
The Guardian newspaper called his performance one of “weight and complexity,” portraying Shylock as both a tyrant and a victim.
Jonathan Munby, director of this production, chose to let the audience interpret the message of the play, staging it without changing a word.
“He talked specifically about how there is no right and wrong, or good and bad necessarily in this play,” Bennett said of the director. “Everybody has good moments and everybody has bad moments. The main idea is the fear of difference, and how we react to otherness in all of its forms in terms of religion and race.”
Audiences expect Shylock to be the villainous because he demands a pound of flesh from Antonio when he cannot pay his debt. Pryce admitted it very hard to convince theater-goers to feel more empathy with him.
“‘Merchant of Venice’ is a comedy, and it’s very gratifying how much the audience laughs and enjoys it, and, at the same time, is sympathetic to Shylock and his family,” he said.
Pickup, who plays Portia, said audiences everywhere have two main concepts of this play: Shylock as the baddie and Portia as the symbol of good and mercy. But this production didn’t shy away from showing unpalatable qualities in all the characters, especially Portia.
“A lot of what she says is not nice,” said Pickup. “She is racist and she judges people by the color of their skin. We chose to keep those lines in the play. They are ugly and not pleasant to hear. It’s hard playing somebody who is not particularly likable, but it is rewarding to see audiences respond.”
Pryce has forged a successful and prolific career as an actor in both film and on stage. He had played lead roles in “Hamlet” and “King Lear” and starred in movies such as “Evita,” “Tomorrow Never Dies” and “Pirates of the Caribbean.”
Pryce says his most memorable Shakespeare experience is always the play he is doing at the moment.
“I was at different stages of development as an actor, playing Hamlet when I was 32,” he said. “But if I’m ever asked to do Shakespeare in China again, I’ll only do it in Shanghai because it’s cooler. I think ‘King Lear’ would be an extraordinary experience in China because it fits well with the Chinese sensibility of storytelling and epic theater.”
The actor also plays High Sparrow in HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” but the character was killed in an explosion in the sixth season.
“I never watched it and I never really liked that genre of TV,” Pryce said. “I actually said no to it the very first time around. Then Season 5 came up, and there was a great character called High Sparrow, which I couldn’t say no to.”
The last performance of the Globe Theater’s “Merchant of Venice” will be staged tonight at 7:15pm at the Oriental Art Center.
It will be performed in English with Chinese subtitles.
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