Tradition -or the struggle to break free of it -is really an odd thing.
Being untraditional means taking risks; it means sticking your neck out.
And, like it or lump it, this very much applies to the arts. We don’t like sticking out necks in Canada, unless we happen to have a sign hanging there saying THIS IS ART, YOU SHOULD CARE. Audiences don’t like that sort of pretentiousness. Our good art tends to happen in a slow simmer, over years, through wind and storm and massive unpopularity. But, so be it.
The Canadian Opera Company’s Artistic Director, Richard Bradshaw, seriously split the city’s arts patrons in two during his early years in Toronto, when audiences sat through all manner of odd stagings. I’ll never forget a Martha Clarke-directed version of The Magic Flute, that saw the Queen of the Night climbing in and out of a dressing wardrobe in a Weimar-republic-inspired fireman’s uniform. Talk about daring unpopularity.
Until Bradshaw’s entrance, opera in Toronto had been strictly presented with horns, petticoats, and the rest of the stereotypical operatic gear. Toronto, at that time, wasn’t ready for such visionary (some would argue arrogant) tactics.
Times have changed, and Bradshaw has stuck it out. The success of the COC is a testament to Bradshaw’s commitment to being thoughtful, and presenting challenging new visions of old favourites. The COC’s traditional-yet-modern reading of Faust this past winter was nothing short of miraculous.
It takes a special talent to seamlessly integrate old and new, to balance modern and old, to recontextualize old material while keeping the emotional heart of a piece intact.
The works of William Shakespeare might seem, on the surface, impossible to modernize, but the timelessness of his works works nicely suits new interpretations and creative staging. Many a great British director, including Adrian Noble, Richard Eyre, and Jonathan Kent, have proven time and again that Shakespeare’s works don’t have to remain straight-jacketed in so-called “traditional” stagings.
The danger is that too much blind resolve to push forward new ideas forsakes the beauty of the original, often leaving performers adrift in perverse modernity, and audiences puzzling, or, worst yet, utterly unmoved.
This is the challenge director Richard Rose faces with the current production of The Merchant of Venice at the Stratford Festival.
Often regarded as a difficult play, the very-traditional Festival has taken a chance on Rose, who is the founding Artistic Director of Necessary Angel, a Toronto-based theatre company specializing in smaller, more experimental works.
The results are mixed, if sadly apathetic.
The bacchanalian opening scene is abuzz with pulsating music and flashing lights; actors wearing double-sided masks -human on one, pig on the other, gives us a sense of being morally adrift amidst a sea of hedonism.
A table is set up to resemble a barren version of the Last Supper. Christ-like overtones become apparent as Antonio, the merchant of the title, is set up as a Jesus-like figure, with a trail of rabble-rousing disciples.
Scott Wentworth’s performance as the merchant of the title is by turns angry, sympathetic, proud and frightened. And yet the airy ease with which he delivers his lines somehow creates a disconnect; is Antonio just a fast-talking merchant, or is he in a hurry to get to his next disco meeting? Instead of feeling for him, we’re struggling to catch what he’s saying most times.
The comfort with which Wentworth delivers Shakespeare’s words clashes against Graham Greene’s obvious discomfort. His Shylock is angry, to be sure, if not somehow, not altogether human. Like many, he delivers a version of a character, as opposed to a real person. Shylock becomes not so much a sympathetic –or pitiable –character, so much as a blank slate upon which every Christian character heaps his scorn.
And what a scorn it is. The production seems determined to bring out the worst in every character, no matter how large or small. Ron Kennell’s Launcelot Gobbo is all slit-eyed looks and fawning praise, while Gareth Potter, Bruce Dow and Jacob James conjure a cartoonish gangster-slickness with their shouted insults and physical intimidations.
The modern look of the production is cold, brash, and not at all the lush Venice we might know from the film version. Instead of the bearded, glistening-robed Shylock, we get clean-shaven, suited Graham Greene. Instead of big-hatted Venetians with bloomers and ladies in corsets, we get bias-cut pint-stripe jackets and oddly-short/long dresses. Instead of lush pillowy Venice, we get cold steel and jagged corners, where religious processions materialize out of nowhere and preachers sell Jesus-vintage tees in the market.
So where are we? A dandy-fied fascist Venice? or Planet Boo-Jew? If this is a cartoon -and Rose does find a few moments of humour in which he lets his actors mug away (the scenes with Portia’s various suitors comes to mind) -it all feels weirdly incongruous to the gravitas of the play’s subtext. Though it isn’t one of his better plays, Shakespeare did write the contrasting scenes with Portia/Nerissa and Antonio/Shylock for a reason -he even included the threads of Bassanio and Graziano to tie them together, linking their themes and characterss. It’s a shame a director like Rose didn’t trust the material and explore these paths more fully.
However, there are some fascinating smaller performances. Rose has chosen to locate the play’s sole moral compass with the small role of Salerio, as played by Paul Amos, in a small but scarily intense performance. The scene in the church, as Salerio admonishes his anti-Semitic mates on Palm Sunday, is a good display of clashing ideologies, and it made me wish that tension had been carried throughout the remainder of the play, particularly since Bruce Dow’s noisy bully Solanio, and Jacob James’ sneering Salarino, clash nicely with Amos’ quiet rage.
However, any sense of tension in moral world views between the characters gets thrown out the window during the court scene, when Shylock is mocked by Antonio’s ‘disciples’.
In what should be one of the most upsetting, disturbing scenes of the play (in which Shylock is forced to convert), there is a notable lack of gravity, horror, and loss. There remains only a schoolyard bully mentality, which is hardly pause for thought. Oh, and a bunch of guys in entirely-ridiculous-looking jackets.
All this mean-spiritedness and disjointed scenery further isolates the audience from the experience, no matter how many the modern touches.
So while I applaud Rose’s bravery in attempts to mix so many styles and references, I also felt lost, and frankly, untouched emotionally, by the play’s end. The Merchant of Venice feels like so many islands without a real city -so many parts without a real whole.
I kept wishing, at the ending, with Jessica singing a Jewish prayer, that Topol would magically appear and make everything right again.
Alas, only a dream.
Cate Kustanczi is a Toronto-based journalist, broadcaster and artist.
She is the columnist for Torontowide.com and a producer/reporter with radio station CIUT.
