2009 Spring Season

Julie Heffernan, Self-Portrait as Bi, World, 2008

BAM 2009 SprIng Season is sponsored by:

ENCOREThe Performing Arta Magazine Bloomberg 2009 Spring Season

Brooklyn Academy of Music

Alan H. Fishman, Chairman of the Board William I. Campbell, Vice Chairman of the Board Adam E. Max, Vice Chairman of the Board

Karen Brooks Hopkins, President Joseph V. Melillo, Executive Producer

Presents by

Approximate BAM Harvey Theater running time: May 6—9, 12—16 at 7:30pm; May 10 & 17 at 3pm two hours and 30 minutes, including (UK) and Propeller production one intermission Directed by Set design by Michael Pavelka Lighting design by Ben Ormerod Music by Propeller Additional arrangements and original music by Jon Trenchard

American stage manager R. Michael Blanco

BAM 2009 Spring Season is sponsored by Bloomberg.

DeWitt Stern Group, Inc. is the presenting sponsor for The Merchant of Venice.

Leadership support for BAM Theater is provided by The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Inc., The Shubert Foundation, Inc., The SHS Founda- tion, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, with major support from the Harold and Mimi Steinberg Charitable Trust, Rose M. Badgeley Residuary Charitable Trust, and additional support from Billy Rose Foundation, Inc.

Opening night reception featured beer is provided by Brooklyn Brewery. The Merchant of Venice

CAST

Antonio Salerio Sam Swainsbury Bassanio Jack Tarlton Gratiano Richard Frame Lorenzo Richard Dempsey Portia Kelsey Brookfield Nerissa Chris Myles Shylock Richard Clothier Morocco Jonathan Livingstone Tubal/Aragon Thomas Padden Lancelot Gobbo John Dougall Jessica Jon Trenchard Duke of Venice Babou Ceesay Monsieur le Bon/Preacher David Newman

Other parts are played by the Company

Understudies Jonathan Livingstone David Newman

PRODUCTION TEAM

Director Edward Hall Designer Michael Pavelka Lighting Designer Ben Ormerod Music by Propeller, Additional Arrangements and Original Music by Jon Trenchard Text adaptation Edward Hall and Roger Warren Relights on Tour by Richard Howell Production Manager Nick Ferguson Company Stage Manager Nick Chesterfield Deputy Stage Manager Claire Henders Assistant Stage Managers Dawn Maxfield, Bryony Rutter Costume Supervisor Hannah Lobelson Wardrobe Mistress Bridget Fell Production Photographer Nobby Clark Assistant Director Paul Hart Sets Built and Painted by Factory Settings Lighting Equipment supplied by Stage Electrics Transport by Paul Mathew Transport & Anglo Pacific International

THANKS TO: Tamara Astor, Lara Chib, Clwyd Theatr Cymru, Angie Kendall, Matt Mackenzie, Deb Kenton, CAD Drawings by Jason Steen, Magic Consultant Alexis Conran, Pennfields Parish

This tour is supported by the Arts Council of and Coutts Bank

The Merchant of Venice was first presented at Poole Lighthouse, December 3, 2008

The actors in The Merchant of Venice appear with the special permission of Actors’ Equity Association. The American stage manager is a member of Actors’ Equity Association. Note

The Merchant of Venice was first published in 1600 but the earliest reference to the play is an entry in the Stationers’ Register of books in 1598: “a book of The Merchant of Venice or otherwise called The Jew of Venice.” So although the play was probably written around 1596—7, it seems to have acquired an alternative title early on and this probably reflects a theatrical response, attention shifting from the nominal hero, the merchant Antonio, to the apparent villain, the Jew Shylock. It is a shift that has been sustained in the centuries since. But that alternative title may be a conscious allusion to another theatrical title: Marlowe’s The Jew of Malta (date uncertain, but before May 30, 1593, when Marlowe was murdered). Interest in the Jews was stirred up by the execution in June 1594 of Roderigo Lopez, a Jewish physician accused of plotting to poison the Queen. In response to this topical interest, The Jew of Malta was revived at the Rose Theatre in June and July 1594. This play was certainly the most immediate influence onThe Merchant of Venice: it sets three distinct racial and religious groups against one another, Jews, Christians, and Turks; all three reappear in The Merchant, and their values are compared and contrasted in both plays.

The Merchant is a complex mingling of fantasy and reality. Both the main stories it uses, the Bond of Flesh and the Three Caskets, were long familiar in myth and legend. The number three frequently occurs in folk-tale material, as in the three riddles of Turandot, or Lear’s three daughters. Shakespeare seems to have taken the pound of flesh story fromIl Pecorone (The Simpleton) by Ser Giovanni Fiorentino (1558), and the caskets from the Gesta Romanorum (revised English translation, 1595, conveniently for the play). But a now lost play, The Jew, was said in 1579 to expose both “the greediness of worldly choosers” and “the bloody minds of usurers;” so the Belmont and Venice plots may already have been combined on the stage and may therefore have provided an immediate theatrical model as The Jew of Malta so clearly did.

Stories from myth and folk-tale are not of course necessarily distanced or remote: they survive because they tell continuing and basic human truths. Hence part of the power (and enduring popularity as well as controversy) of The Merchant of Venice. But Shakespeare has intensified that power in the strong vein of reality with which he has dramatized the stories. On one level, Portia is a heroine of romance; but she is also very tough-minded, both in her dismissal of her Moorish suitor and in her turning the tables on Shylock in the trial scene. Her love for Bassanio is passionately and lyrically expressed, but when she says “Since you are dear bought, I will love you dear,” her witty word-play brings the commercial values of Venice into the initially contrasted world of Belmont.

Both plots depend on money. Some idea of the financial scale on which the play operates may be gained from a simple comparison. Bassanio borrows three thousand ducats to pay for his wooing of Portia. That was roughly £700 in Elizabethan money. At about the same time as he wrote the play, Shakespeare bought New Place, the second largest house in Stratford, for £60. In modern money, Bassanio wants around £375,000 to finance his wooing expedition. This financial scale helps to sharpen our sense of the crisis facing Antonio. And there is another interesting glimpse of contemporary reality: usury—charging interest on loans—was forbidden to Christians, so the Jews were used for the purpose—and then reviled for it, as in the play. In fact, though the Jews were the financiers of Europe, very few lived in England; but Shakespeare did not need to look far for a model of a usurer: his own father John was twice prosecuted for violating the law by charging usurious interest. There may be fantasy in The Merchant of Venice, but reality too, and it is upon the balance between the two that the play depends.

At the heart of The Merchant is a tension between justice and mercy, but it is also about love, revenge, intolerance, and the nature of bonds, the obligations of one human being to another. Antonio, whose life is legally forfeit, admits that the Duke of Venice “cannot deny the course of law.” The law should be impartial, a safeguard for every citizen. But the law also has to be interpreted: presiding at the trial, the Duke is scarcely impartial, expressing overt pity for Antonio and describing Shylock as “a stony adversary, an inhuman wretch.” While Shylock is obviously more complex than that implies, he too uses the law in his attempt to kill Antonio. His legalistic stand is opposed by Portia’s eloquent appeal for mercy; but when she repeatedly comes up against the stone wall of his insistence on the letter of Note

the law, she responds in kind, turning the tables on him with a legal technicality, the drop of blood, and enforces the legal penalties he has incurred. When she asks Antonio what mercy he can show Shylock, Antonio asks the court to spare Shylock the confiscation of his goods—but on condition that he leaves all his possessions to his hated Christian son-in-law and, most controversially of all, that he become a Christian. Is this mercy, or a form of revenge? Shakespeare’s dramatization of the scene denies us any simple black and white resolution: his studied ambiguity here is the most extreme example of his balancing of issues throughout the play.

This tension between the theoretical impartiality of the law and the imperfection of its executants recurs in the treatment of bonds and their outcome. These are of two kinds: bonds of law and bonds of love. Characters enter into bonds for different reasons, but none turn out as expected. Antonio accepts Shylock’s “merry bond” in order to finance his beloved Bassanio’s wooing of Portia, with near-fatal consequences to himself; Bassanio and Gratiano enter into the bond of marriage, symbolized by the rings which they then give away; Jessica breaks her bond with her father by marrying the Christian “unthrift” Lorenzo and converting to Christianity: this last bond, especially, signals trouble ahead.

The final scene appears to begin with a lyrical celebration of their love—but the series of mythological love stories which they cite as precedents all ended in disaster. On a wider level, this final scene contains an astonishing contrast. Lorenzo famously celebrates the music of the spheres, something so spiritual that no earthly ears can hear it, as an image of harmony; but the play actually ends, not with harmony, but with a bawdy joke from the character who has consistently represented the most violent intolerance in the play. Here Shakespeare carries to an extreme the contrast between lyrical fantasy and a very down-to-earth reality. To borrow a phrase from Groucho Marx, “the contrary is also true.”

—Roger Warren Who’s Who Bob Barrett (Antonio) trained at Guildhall School (); he was in the short filmPlay of Music and Drama. For Propeller: The One the Game. While training he appeared in The Hour Dream, The Winter’s Tale, The Taming American Clock, A Clockwork Orange, Tartuffe, of the Shrew, . Recent theater: The Threepenny Opera, A Midsummer Night’s Nicholas Nickleby (Chichester Festival Theatre, Dream, All’s Well that Ends Well (Redgrave , tour); (Thelma Holt Theatre and tour) and , and was heard in Productions, dir. Y. Ninagawa); Journey’s End the BBC radio production Incident. (West End); After the Dance (Oxford Stage Co., Best Supporting Actor nomination, TMA Awards.) Babou Ceesay (Duke of Venice) trained at Other theater work includes: Victory, Of Mice Oxford School of Drama. This is Ceesay’s first and Men, The Recruiting Officer(Royal Lyceum show with Propeller. Theater work includes The Theatre, Edinburgh); Hamlet, (Greenwich/West Overwhelming (National Theater [NT]); Macbeth Yorkshire Playhouse); The Castle and (Uncle) (Out of Joint, ; international tour); Walking Vanya, (Wrestling School); Cyrano de Bergerac Waterfall (Tiata Fahodz, ); Think (Haymarket); Damned for Despair (The Gate), and Global, Fuck Local; and Quiet and We Hear School for Scandal (Royal Exchange). Television (). Television appearances includes , EastEnders, , include Law and Order UK, Silent Witness, and Absolutely Fabulous, The Cazelets, Invasion: Whistleblower. He appeared in the filmSeverance . Earth (BBC); Wonderful You (Hartswood); The 10th Kingdom (NBC); and the filmShakespeare Richard Clothier (Shylock) is a long-standing in Love. member of Propeller. His appearances with the company include , , Kelsey Brookfield (Portia) graduated from Bristol Twelfth Night, Rose Rage, A Midsummer Night’s Old Vic Theatre School this year. Professional Dream, and The Winter’s Tale. Other theater work includes Don’t You Leave Me Here (West work includes For Services Rendered (Watermill Yorkshire Playhouse), Ernest, and Pale Moon Theatre); Troilus and Cressida, (RSC/Edinburgh Who’s Who

Festival); And Then There Were None (Gielgud (English Shakespeare Company Old Vic, West Theatre); Rose Rage (Duke’s Theatre, New York); End, UK, and world tours); Americans, Rose A Doll’s House, (Birmingham Rep and tour); Bernd, Professor Bernhardi (Arcola); Shadow of a (Sheffield Crucible);The Browning Gunman, John Bull’s Other Island (Tricycle); and Version (Theatre Royal, Bath; tour); Grace many more. Television includes Waking the Dead, (Edinburgh Festival, tour); , (Mermaid He Knew He Was Right, Randall and Hopkirk Theatre); Salome (US tour including BAM/New (Deceased), Monarch of the Glen, The Negotiator, York); King Lear, The Merchant of Venice, As Time Goes By, Dunrulin, The Houseman’s The Dybbuk and The Tempest (RSC/Stratford); Tale, Macbeth, , Taggart. He has appeared Hamlet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The in over 50 drama productions for BBC Radio. Virtuoso and The Alchemist (RSC/Barbican), and Tango at the End of Winter (). Richard Frame (Gratiano) trained at the Television includes Spooks, Kingdom, City of Vice, Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Theater credits Foyle’s War, Midsomer Murders, The Brontës, The include I Love You Because (); Brief, Without Motive, The Knock, and London’s Absolute Beginners (Lyric, Hammersmith); Burning. Film includes Hippy, Hippy Shake; So (UK tour); Promises, Promises This Is Romance; and Bye, Bye Columbus. (Sheffield Crucible);The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (West Yorkshire Playhouse); Richard Dempsey (Lorenzo) trained at The Our House (); A Chorus of Guildhall School of Music and Drama. His career Disapproval and The Beggar’s Opera (Bristol Old began nearly 20 years ago with the lead role of Vic); Love’s Labour’s Lost, Where’s Charley?, Peter Pevensie in the BBC’s Chronicles of Narnia. and A Midsummer Night’s Dream (all for Open Other work includes The One Hour Dream Air Regent’s Park); and Sealife (New Vic Studio). (Propeller); Burn/Chatroom/Citizenship (NT); Dirty Television includes Kingdom, MI High, Family Dancing (West End); Out of This World and Just Affairs, Wire in the Blood, Hearts and Bones, So (Chichester Festival Theatre); A Midsummer The Bill, Hope and Glory, Robbie the Reindeer in Night’s Dream (RSC); Peep Show, The Lion, Hooves of Fire; radio: An Odd Body. the Witch and the Wardrobe (RSC); Honk! (NT, UK tour, Stephen Joseph Theatre); Fame (West Jonathan Livingstone (Morocco) graduated from End); The Dance of Death (Tricycle Theatre); RADA in 2008. Theater work includes Alice in and Into the Woods (West End). TV credits Wonderland (Walled Garden, Brockwell Park); include: Wycliffe, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Island Ignition 2 (Rough Cuts season, Royal Court); and at War, Cleopatra, Doctors, Tilly Trotter, Wives Pandora (workshop for Standing on the Shoulders and Daughters, Aristocrats, and recently Egypt: of Giants and Talawa Theatre). The Pharaoh and Great Belzoni. Dempsey has appeared in films includingWarlock , 24 Hours Chris Myles (Nerissa) trained at the Central in London, The Barber of Serbia, and Prince of School of Speech and Drama and has appeared in Jutland. Cast recordings: Into the Woods, Honk!, all previous Propeller productions: The Taming of , Just So, and Fame. the Shrew and Twelfth Night; The Winter’s Tale; A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Rose Rage; The John Dougall (Lancelot Gobbo) trained in Comedy of Errors, and Henry V. Recent theater Glasgow. Theater work includes The White Devil includes A Doll’s House (Krogstad for Northern (Menier); The Winter’s Tale (Shakespeare’s Globe Stage); Shaw Cornered (Shakespeare for the Shaw touring); Six Characters in Search of an Author Society of India, New Delhi); Neville’s Island (National Theatre of Scotland); Coriolanus, (Neville at The Watermill); and Marieluise (Bertolt Under the Black Flag, Measure for Measure Brecht, ). Television appearances: (Shakespeare’s Globe); Hamlet, Love in a Wood, Sex and the Neanderthals, Hands Together, Macbeth (RSC Stratford, London, US, Japan); and as a contestant on 15 to 1 and Countdown. The Merchant of Venice, The Two Gentlemen Film experience includes Vigo, Lip-up Fatty, of Verona, Measure for Measure, The Devil Cocktail Nation, The Score, Little Joe’s Bad Trip, is an Ass, Faust, The Cherry Orchard (RSC and Green Suits the Beautiful. Myles is a local Stratford, West End, UK tour); Peter Pan, The councillor in Hackney, East London. Winter’s Tale, The Crucible (RSC); The Wars of the Roses: Richard II, Henry IV Parts I and II, David Newman (Monsieur le Bon/Preacher) Henry V, Henry VI Parts I, II and III, Richard III, Theater credits include TinTin ( Theatre), , The Winter’s Tale, Coriolanus Faust (Punchdrunk/NT), Shakespeare’s War of Who’s Who the Roses—Trilogy (West Yorkshire Playhouse), Festival, international tour); Katherine (Old Vic); Half Life (), The Graduate Sunset Boulevard (Watermill); Great Expectations (The New Vic), Mary Stuart (Scary Little Girls), (New Vic); Mack and Mabel (Watermill, national The Adding Machine, and The One Hour Dream tour, West End); The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole (Propeller). aged 13¾ (Belfast Festival); Todd! The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (Kabosh Theatre, Irish tour); Thomas Padden (Tubal/Aragon) trained at the Leonardo’s Last Supper (Regent’s Park Open Air Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Theater Theatre); La Ronde (); Peter includes Privates on Parade (West Yorkshire Pan (Oxford Playhouse); several pantomimes Playhouse, Birmingham Rep); Merrily We Roll for New World and Jordan Productions; and Along (Watermill Theatre); The Cherry Orchard, Benjamin Britten’s opera A Midsummer Night’s (Clywd Theatr Cymru); Macbeth, A Midsummer Dream (London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall). He Night’s Dream, and Lady Be Good (Open Air appeared in the filmThe Da Vinci Code (Columbia Theatre, Regent’s Park); James and the Giant Pictures). www.jontrenchard.com. Peach (Octagon Theatre); The Winter’s Tale, . Troilus and Cressida, Titus Andronicus, and The Edward Hall’s (Director) production of The Deep Comedy of Errors (Shakespeare’s Globe); Measure Blue Sea starring Greta Scacchi recently finished for Measure (Shakespeare’s Globe, US tour); and its run at the . This year he Lady in the Van (Theatre Royal Bath, tour). filmed episodes ofSpooks for Kudos TV, and three episodes of Kingdom starring Stephen Fry. Theater Sam Swainsbury (Salerio) trained at Bristol Old includes For Services Rendered (Watermill); The Vic Theatre School. This is his first time working Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night (Old Vic, with Propeller. Theater credits include Slope world tour—Drama Desk nomination, NY); Mark (Tramway, Glasgow); Hysteria (Birmingham Rep); Ravenhill’s Dick Whittington (Barbican); Once The Burial at Thebes (Nottingham Playhouse in a Lifetime (NT); A Streetcar Named Desire and Barbican). Television credits include Jekyll (Roundabout Theatre, NY); The Winter’s Tale (Hartswood Films) and Harley Street (Carnival). (Watermill, world tour); A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (NT–Olivier nomination, Jack Tarlton (Bassanio) trained at LAMDA Outstanding Musical Production); Calico and has appeared in two previous Propeller (Duke of York’s); Edmond (NT); A Midsummer productions: and Twelfth Night’s Dream (Comedy Theatre; Watermill; UK Night (Old Vic, The Watermill, RSC Complete tour—TMA award, Best Touring Production); The Works Festival, BAM, international tour). Other Hinge of the World (Guildford); Macbeth (Albery theater includes The Deep Blue Sea (Theatre Theatre); Rose Rage adapted with Roger Warren Royal, Bath Productions—Vaudeville Theatre, UK from Henry VI parts I, II and III, (Haymarket tour); The Sexual Neuroses of Our Parents (The Theatre, Watermill, UK/international tour, Chicago Gate); She Stoops to Conquer (Manchester Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Duke’s Theatre, NY–Olivier Exchange); Coram Boy and Once in a Lifetime nomination, Best Director and TMA award for Best (NT); The Man Who (Orange Tree); Beasts Touring Production); The Constant Wife (Apollo); and Beauties (Bristol Old Vic); Gagarin Way Putting It Together (Chichester); Julius Caesar (Primecut); Romeo and Juliet (Chichester Festival (RSC); Tantalus (Denver Centre, UK tour); Henry Theatre); Howie the Rookie (Fourth Road); Afore V (RSC– Show award for Theatre for Night Come (Young Vic); An Inspector Calls The Histories); Twelfth Night (Watermill Theatre– (); A Month in the Country and TMA/Barclays Theatre Best Director award); Troilus and Cressida (RSC). Television work Sacred Heart (Royal Court Theatre Upstairs); includes The Golden Hour, Dead Ringers, Doctor Celaine (); The Two Gentlemen Who, The Genius of Mozart, Swivel on the Tip, of Verona (RSC); The Comedy of Errors and Henry Hearts and Bones, Life Support, Wings of Angels, V (Watermill, Pleasance Theatre London, RSC— and The Cater Street Hangman. Film work The Other Place, Stratford, international tour); includes The Unscarred; radio: The Teahouse That Good Night (Yvonne Arnaud tour); Detective—The Edinburgh Mystery. (Watermill, Tokyo Globe); Richard III (Tokyo Globe); and Cain (Minerva Studio, Chichester). Jon Trenchard (Jessica) trained at the London His production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream Academy of Performing Arts. Theater credits (London’s Comedy Theatre, 2003), went to BAM include The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth in 2004; he and the production were nominated Night (Propeller, Watermill, RSC Complete Works for Drama Desk awards. His American production Who’s Who

of Rose Rage (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, Ben Ormerod (Lighting Designer) For Propeller: 2003) transferred to the Duke’s Theatre, NY, in The Taming of the Shrew, Twelfth Night, The 2004; it won four Jeff awards including Best Play, Winter’s Tale, Rose Rage, A Midsummer Director, and Ensemble Cast. Hall’s television Night’s Dream, and others. His recent theater work includes: Spooks (Kudos); Kingdom work includes Zorro! (West End); The Dresser (Parallel Films); Trial and Retribution (La Plante (Watford); Legal Fictions (West End); and Productions); Miss Marple—Sleeping Murder productions in Sydney, New York, Toronto, Greece, starring Geraldine McEwan; Cutting Edge: Safari Denmark, and for RSC, NT, and other West End Strife (Channel 4), and Richard III (NHK in shows. In 2009 he will be lighting Dimetos Japan). Radio productions include Dear Exile, at the . Previous opera Eveline, Into Exile (Radio 4). Hall is Associate productions include Jeanne d’Arc au Bûcher Director at the NT, , and The Watermill (Santa Cecilia), Rome; Falstaff, Così fan tutte, Theatre, and Artistic Director of Propeller Theatre Il Trovatore (Scottish Opera); La Traviata (ENO); Company. This year, Hall revives his production The Turn of the Screw (Bath and Wessex); Baa The Hinge of the World (now entitled Two Men of Baa Black Sheep (Opera North/BBC2); Punch Florence) at the Huntington Theatre in Boston. and Judy (Aldeburgh); and The Mask of Orpheus (BBCSO). Dance includes Didy Veldman’s frame Michael Pavelka (Set Designer) trained at of view for Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet, NY; Wimbledon School of Art, where he now leads the Veldman’s See Blue Through (Ballet Gulbenkian, Design for Performance course (www.wimbledon. Introdans/Phoenix); Tender Hooks (Skånes Dans arts.ac.uk). Theater includes two plays for the Teater/Ballet Gulbenkian), Cinderella (Göteborg), late Lindsey Anderson: The Fishing Trip and Essence (Walker Dance Park Music), and Journey Holiday (Old Vic). Work with Edward Hall and (Candoco). He designed lighting for Calico Propeller includes Henry V, The Winter’s Tale Museum of Textiles, Ahmedabad; directed Athol (recent US tour), Rose Rage (Theatre Royal Fugard’s Dimetos at the Gate Theatre, London and Haymarket), and a new production at Chicago adapted four films from Kieslowski’sDekalog for Shakespeare Theatre (transferred to New York; E15. Best Costume Design nomination, Chicago’s Jeff Awards, and The Winter’s Tale); their latest work Roger Warren’s (Text Editor) numerous is The Merchant of Venice. At the Library Theatre publications include books about A Midsummer Manchester his many designs include The Life Night’s Dream and Shakespeare’s late plays of Galileo (Best Design—Manchester Evening in performance, editions of Twelfth Night, News Theatre Awards) and A Midsummer Cymbeline, Henry VI Part Two, The Two Night’s Dream (winner Best Production MEN Gentlemen of Verona, and Pericles for the Oxford Awards). Pavelka co-produced a Young People’s Shakespeare series. Theater work includes Shakespeare Festival in Ulan Bator, Mongolia extensive collaboration with Peter Hall at NT, and designed the first African languageMother at Stratford-upon-Avon, and for his American Courage and Her Children in Kampala, (Kennedy Shakespeare Company in Los Angeles. His Center and Grahamstown Festival, South Africa). collaborations with Edward Hall include Julius He recently designed Revelations and Off the Wall Caesar (Stratford, 2001); Twelfth Night, The with Liam Steel and Stan Won’t Dance (QEH) Winter’s Tale, and a two-play adaptation of the and Twelfth Night/The Taming of the Shrew (RSC, Henry VI cycle, Rose Rage (Watermill Theatre, on Old Vic), and Twelfth Night (Seattle Repertory tour, and West End). Theatre). His many West End productions include Absurd Person Singular, The Constant Wife, How R. Michael Blanco (American Stage Manager) the Other Half Loves, Other People’s Money, BAM: Karole Armitage’s The Predator’s Ball; Leonardo, Blues in the Night (and Dublin, New Jonathan Miller’s St. Matthew Passion and Così York, and Tokyo); Macbeth starring Sean Bean; fan tutte; Playing Shakespeare USA with John A Midsummer Night’s Dream; and A Few Good Barton; Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychose; Sydney Men with Rob Lowe (). Theater Company—White Devil, Hedda Gabler; Designs for RSC include The Odyssey, The Donmar Warehouse—Uncle Vanya/Twelfth Night; Two Gentlemen of Verona, Henry V, and Julius RSC—Don Carlos, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Caesar, and for NT in the Olivier, Edmond starring Hecuba. Met Opera, NYC: Royal Spanish National Kenneth Branagh. Ballet, Bolshoi Ballet, Robert Wilson’s Le Martyre de Saint Sebastian, Ennosuke’s Kabuki. Who’s Who

Propeller productions are produced by The Watermill Theatre’s production of Sunset The Watermill Theatre. Boulevard by Andrew Lloyd Webber, directed by with musical direction PROPELLER PRODUCTIONS SINCE 1997 by transferred to the West End in 1997 Henry V at The Watermill December ’08. 1998 Henry V and The Comedy of Errors at The Watermill and on tour The theater seats 220 people within a stunning 1999 Twelfth Night at The Watermill converted mill on the bank of the river Lambourn. 2001 Rose Rage at The Watermill and It was once a fulling and tucking mill—a process international tour in the woollen industry in which woven cloth was 2002 Rose Rage on tour and in London hammered and felted with water-driven wooden 2003 A Midsummer Night’s Dream at The hammers. Later it became a corn mill and, at Watermill, international tour and in London the beginning of the 20th century, is believed 2004 A Midsummer Night’s Dream at BAM to have been used in the making of fine paper. 2005 The Winter’s Tale at The Watermill and Converted into a theater in the early 1960s, this international tour including BAM remarkable building makes the theater experience 2006/07 The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth extraordinarily intimate for both performers and Night at The Watermill, The Old Vic, RSC’s the audience. Complete Works Festival and international tour including BAM For more details go to www.watermill.org.uk 2008 The Merchant of Venice at the Lighthouse, Poole 2008 The One Hour Dream FOR WATERMILL PRODUCTIONS 2009 The Merchant of Venice and A Midsummer Executive & Artistic Director Hedda Beeby Night’s Dream at The Watermill and Associate Artistic Directors international tour John Doyle & Edward Hall General Manager Clare Lindsay PROPELLER AWARDS & NOMINATIONS Tour Producer Caro MacKay Propeller has won numerous awards and Tour Marketing and PR Tei Williams nominations, including the Barclays Theatre Finance Manager Faramade Rees Award, TMA Theatres Award, Jeff Award, OBIE Accounts Michele Tubman Award, and New York Drama Desk Award for Administration Secretary Julie Pearson director, design, production, lighting, music, and Administration Assistant Matthew Dewsbury more. Development Director Jo Bycroft Development Administrator Kathryn Beale Marketing Manager Jan Ferrer THE WATERMILL THEATRE Marketing OfficerSamantha Preston The Watermill Theatre has developed a reputation Production Manager Lawrence T. Doyle as one of Britain’s most exciting regional theaters. Company Stage Manager Ami-Jayne Steele-Childe From this beautiful theater work has been created Assistant Production Manager Nelly Chauvet that is admired around the world. Each year The Wardrobe Debbie Macgregor Watermill mounts some twelve new productions, Outreach Director Ade Morris with work ranging from Shakespeare to musicals and classics to new plays. The Watermill is deeply committed to touring and produces tours on a local, national, and international level. The Watermill’s acclaimed production of Hot Mikado will be on the road in the Autumn of ‘09. Other tours visit rural communities, playing in village halls and small art centers. The Watermill also has a thriving youth theater for ages 6—21 and runs an extensive education program working closely with a variety of educational and community organizations and local businesses. The Merchant of Venice Photo: Nobby Clark Nobby Photo: A Play for Our Times by Stan Schwartz

This May, British theater director Edward Hall and his internationally acclaimed, all-male Shakespearean company Propeller will be visiting BAM for the fourth time. But lucky New York theater-goers who happily recall the transcendent magic of Hall’s Midsummer Night’s Dream (2004) or The Taming of the Shrew (2007) may be surprised by the visceral and decidedly dark vision of the company’s latest effort—The Merchant of Venice, set in a modern prison replete with all the tensions and violent undercurrents of an episode of Oz. Earlier this year, the British press seized upon the obvious pun (i.e., the Bard said famously that Denmark was a prison, but now it’s Venice), but also went on to rave about this striking and unusual production, at BAM’s Harvey Theater from May 6—17.

Granted, an all-male cast makes sense in this multi-tiered, clanging bars set. Still, the prison setting may seem like an odd choice for the story of Shylock, the Jewish money lender who demands a pound of flesh from his adversary Antonio (the titular Merchant of Venice) for an unpaid debt, leaving the disguised Portia to argue for the quality of mercy in the play’s famous trial scene. But in a recent phone conversation, Hall was both articulate and convincing in his reasoning. “I wanted to find an environment in which there was a seething, underlying violent tension,” he explained, “a claustrophobia about groups of people whose environment has caused them to become radicalized in their social groupings. And prison does this. [People] become more like themselves, or they become brutalized.”

Indeed, the world of the play is brutal. Futhermore, the considerable racial invective in Merchant— principally anti-Semitic against Shylock and Jews in general—would not have raised any eyebrows in Shakespeare’s audiences. But then again, racial invective of any kind also makes sense in the hotbed subculture of a modern prison, where daily survival is fraught with danger and often requires taking sides along clearly drawn lines. Prison is often depicted as a place where strong identity politics do not allow for nuance or complexity, or put simply, it seems best to fit into one clear group. In this way, too, the prison setting fits in nicely with Hall’s notion of the play being “about tribalism, whose side  The Merchant of Venice are you on—are you Jewish, are you Christian, are you Moroccan, are you French…?” Merchant, of course, has been attacked over the years for being anti-Semitic. Hall maintains it is not. Rather, it is a play that features anti-Semitic characters—something else entirely. “It’s a play about prejudice and intolerance,” says Hall, “and I think Shakespeare is extremely clear about that.”

No less a scholar than Harold Bloom in his well-regarded book Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, has stated, “One would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to recognize that Shakespeare’s grand equivocal comedy…is nevertheless a profoundly anti-Semitic work,” demonstrating that it is Richard Dempsey and Jon Trenchard. Photo: Nobby Clark Richard Dempsey and Jon Trenchard. a debate for the ages. But Bloom inadvertently brings up another interesting issue with regard to Merchant—the notion that the play is a comedy. In fact, the play is traditionally (and strangely, by modern sensibilities) categorized as such. But Hall quickly counters, “Shakespeare wasn’t the one who labels his plays. He didn’t say ‘that’s a comedy, that’s a tragedy, that’s a romance,’ it was other people, to suit their ends—and who knows what their motives were.” Tellingly, in many traditional productions, the two plots—Shylock and Antonio (deadly serious) and Portia, her suitors, and the caskets (comedic)—have often seemed at odds with each other tonally, even a bit schizophrenic. But in Propeller’s production, the evening comes off as a much more unified whole—and not very comedic.

Mind you, a unified vision is one of Hall’s and Propeller’s trademarks, together with a pronounced, athletic physicality (in particular evidence here), a palpable sense of direct audience contact, and of course, a disarming simplicity and clarity of expression. Altogether, this Merchant makes for a vivid dream of an evening in which the voice of Shakespeare speaks clearly to our own troubled times. As Hall puts it, the play “opens up questions about the relationship between justice and mercy, right and wrong. I don’t think Shakespeare answers any of them, but he certainly throws the issues out in a very provocative fashion.” And if Propeller’s interpretation seems harsher than traditional productions, there is always one note of optimism—the play’s insistence on justice being tempered with mercy. Hall eloquently sums it up this way: “The exercise of mercy is something we do when we are not compelled to do so. If we can look for that, we have a chance of breaking vicious cycles. It’s a fascinating play for our times.” )

Stan Schwartz, a freelance arts journalist based in New York, has a particular interest in European theater and film and has spent time in England, France, and Stockholm.