The Merchant of Venice, and: The Tempest (review)

Seattle Shakespeare Company's spring and summer productions, The Merchant of Venice and The Tempest, featured strong directorial choices, excellent individual performances, and generally fine ensemble acting from guest directors and Equity and non-Equity actors. The company also continually found inventive ways to use its dismal acting space, the Center House Theatre, located in the basement of the building. Oh for a new theatre!

For Merchant two large doors upstage opened into a café with two octagonal tables center stage. Antonio, et al., were stock-market mavens of the Roaring Twenties, dressed in three piece suits and enjoying a drink after work. The conversation was loud and well-oiled, with Gratiano the loudest talker and heaviest drinker. Bassanio, much younger than Antonio, had obviously rehearsed his plea for funds to visit a lady "richly left"; he was just as obviously conscious of his past mis-management of Antonio's generosity. Antonio's angry "Fie, fie" at Solanio's suggestion that he may be in love hinted at a possibly repressed homosexual desire for Bassanio, but Antonio was more annoyed than sad at Bassanio's request for more travel funds. Only in act five did Antonio seem truly sad once he realized that Bassanio was finally lost to him.

Portia drank some of the remaining booze while mocking her previous wooers, as if wealth privileged ridicule. Sarcasm also marked Shylock's initial dialogue with Bassanio. Charles Leggett, dressed in traditional Jewish gabardine and yarmulke, played Shylock initially as self-confident and even jaunty in public; he fully enjoyed dallying with Bassanio's nervousness at having to come to "the dog Jew" to borrow money. Yet Leggett's aside "How like a fawning publican he looks!" revealed a fierce loathing once Antonio entered the café. Leggett rose from the table and spat his hatred directly to spectators, as if to justify to us his determination to "feed fat [his] ancient grudge." Leggett's large, shaking body was consumed by hatred, and his choice of a Shylock beyond reconciliation with the Christians only deepened the ironic humor and offered friendship in

Allan Armstrong (left) as the Duke of Venice and Charles Leggett (right) as Shylock in Seattle Shakespeare Company's 2009 production of Merchant of Venice, directed by John Langs. Photo by Ken Holmes.

(Left to right) Will Beinbrink as Bassanio, Troy Fischnaller as Gratanio, and Mark Chamberlain as Antonio in Seattle Shakespeare Company's 2009 production of Merchant of Venice, directed by John Langs. Photo by Ken Holmes.

his subsequent dialogue with Antonio. During "Signor Antonio, many a time and oft" Leggett strode among the tables, gestured nonchalantly to his "guests" whom he sensed he could now master, and from "Fair sir," down to "lend you thus much moneys" Shylock's hatred from earlier in the scene intensified the terrible irony of his being asked to lend money to one who had spat on him. Leggett drove these words...