The Merchant of Venice

After the horrifying events of the Holocaust, The Merchant of Venice has become one of the most difficult of Shakespeare's plays, given the strong strain of apparent anti-Semitism that underlies its plot. But this superb production mounted by director Trevor Nunn and the Royal National Theatre in 1999 brought new resonance to the tale by astutely editing and rearranging the text and imaginatively transferring the action to the German cabaret society of the late 1920s. Nunn and Chris Hunt elected to restage the play for film rather than simply tape the performance as it occurred on the boards, and the result is a fluid, resonant rendering that boldly reinterprets the work while capturing both its grimly comedic aspects and its shattering power. The entire cast is excellent, but Henry Goodman dominates as Shylock, the moneylender whose loss of his daughter drives him to his ill-fated insistence on the payment of the pound of flesh owed him by his creditor Antonio. David Bamber makes Antonio intriguingly nervous and ambivalent, while Derbhle Crotty's flippant Portia comes into her own in the famous courtroom scene in which she impersonates the lawyer who brings Shylock down. Over all one can feel the guiding intelligence of Nunn, whose sensitivity to the text is matched by his theatrical acumen. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. Aud: H, C, P. (F. Swietek)