Utah Shakespeare Festival’s “The Merchant of Venice” is a tale for our time
By Brian Passey
Don’t for a moment think that casting women in the lead roles for the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s “The Merchant of Venice” is meant to be a novelty.
No, it’s not common for women to play roles like Shylock and Antonio, but that’s the case in this summer’s production of the Bard’s notoriously troubling play at the Utah Shakespeare Festival. What matters is the acting, and when it comes to that, Lisa Wolpe is sizzling in her portrayal of the much-maligned and shockingly vengeful Shylock.
It makes sense that women would play the lead roles in a play directed by Melinda Pfundstein, a favorite among the festival’s acting company for many years now. Pfundstein is a co-founder and the executive director of the Statera Foundation, an organization working “to bring women into full and equal participation in the arts.”
That’s a formidable challenge at a Shakespeare festival, given the massive gender disparity of the Bard’s work. Women only account for 16 percent of all Shakespearean characters. And of those characters, the women have far fewer lines than the men. The character Rosalind from “As You Like It” has 721 lines, making it the largest female Shakespearean role. But her male counterpart, the title character of “Hamlet,” has 1,506 lines.
Yet Shakepeare’s plays are rife with women adopting disguises to play men. In fact, that very thing happens in “The Merchant of Venice” as Portia (Tarah Flanagan) and Nerissa (Betsy Mugavero) dress up as a lawyer and his clerk. If the characters are doing it on stage, why not try the same thing with real actors who are actually trained to become other people?
A number of women play male characters in this production, but it’s Wolpe’s performance as Shylock that truly stands out. She delivers a master class on acting here.
“The Merchant of Venice” is technically classified as one of Williams Shakespeare’s comedies, though it addresses a number of dark and disturbing themes, including religious discrimination, xenophobia, and revenge.
Yes, there’s also a love story, and it’s the plot device that sets in motion this tragic tale of inhumanity and unkindness. The central problem of the play is whether the Jewish moneylender Shylock will truly be allowed to cut away a pound of flesh from the Christian businessman Antonio as punishment for Antonio’s failure to repay a loan on time.
It sounds like a steep price to pay, but it’s a case of the persecuted becoming the persecutors, the bullied becoming bullies. Shylock is a victim of anti-Semitism, and that discrimination has left him with a desire to wrong those who wronged him. This backstory also gives us one of Shakespeare’s most poignant and enduring speeches as Shylock delivers the famous “Hath not a Jew eyes” speech, which talks of the same basic traits shared by all of humanity, regardless of creed, race, gender, etc.
“The villainy you teach me, I will execute,” Wolpe declares as Shylock, bringing to mind many of the partisan political battles of our time — neither of them willing to take the high road because of the “villainy” of the other.
A striking result of women having the opportunity to play prominent roles like Shylock means that more talented performers get to deliver some of the most famous lines in the English language. Yes, there are some famous Shakespearean lines delivered by women, like Portia’s own “quality of mercy” speech from this very play, but male actors delivered those lines — playing female characters — until the mid-17th century, when women were finally allowed to act on English stages.
It’s actually surprisingly to think about how the gender disparity in theater may even be larger than the racial disparity. It’s now commonplace for black actors to portray white characters. Denzel Washington playing a Spanish prince in the 1993 film version of “Much Ado About Nothing” helped normalize it. Now we live in the age of “Hamilton,” when even George Washington is played by a black man. It’s understood that acting should be about the character the actor becomes and not the person the actor is.
Both the play, as written, and this particular production, as directed, strike on topics for our time. Shylock’s argument comes down to following the letter of the law, even when Portia argues for the quality of mercy. Yes, she says, the law allows the moneylender to cut away a pound of flesh from the merchant, but is it morally right to do so? Is there a more compelling argument to consider above the letter of the law?
“The quality of mercy is not strained,” says Flanagan as Portia (playing the lawyer, Balthazar) with a quiet nobility. “’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown.”
The beautiful thing about this play is the complexity behind its central problem. It’s easy to make Shylock out to be the vengeful villain, but the Christians aren’t spotless here. Not only did their behavior create the villain, they don’t learn from his vengeance and instead continue on with their own brand of discriminatory villainy. Sigh.
Shakespeare’s text on its own is a fascinating study of seemingly eternal truths about humanity’s triumphs and failings. Yet Pfundstein’s brilliant choices in how to portray these truths make it even more poignant. This is powerful stuff, adeptly tackled by powerful actors.
If you come away from this production wondering why Antonio and Shylock were played by women, you’re missing the point. The point is that it doesn’t matter. We have to stop focusing on our differences and instead embrace our shared humanity.
The Utah Shakespeare Festival’s production of “The Merchant of Venice” continues through Sept. 7 in the Engelstad Shakespeare Theatre at Southern Utah University’s Beverley Center for the Arts in Cedar City. Tickets are $20–$75. Visit bard.org or call (800) 752-9849.
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