Paul Prescott

Review of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (directed by Rupert Goold for the Royal Shakespeare Company) at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 19 May, 15 June and 22 September 2011

The Merchant of Venice is, inter alia, a play about a culture of addictive gambling in a city built on risk, about the commodification of flesh, and about the tension between surface and depth, simulacrum and substance. It was therefore apt not only that Rupert Goold’s flashy, fleshy production was situated in that high-rolling mirage in the desert, Las Vegas, but also that that decision seemed either profoundly liberating or slickly superficial (or somewhere in between), depending on one’s taste for a modern-dress, kitschy and exuberantly anti-romantic reading of the play. For some punters this was glib and oily art, the choice of setting vulgar and reductive, the cast’s assumption of American accents a fatal distraction, the reimagining of Launcelot Gobbo as an itinerant Elvis impersonator merely an excuse to soundtrack the production with the songs of The King. Quentin Letts, Daily Mail theatre critic and lightning rod of Middle England, saw in the production not only the worst excesses of director’s theatre but also a symptom of the political inclinations of the man he insists on referring to as ‘‘the RSC’s Left-wing artistic director, Michael Boyd’’ (Letts para. 16). Meanwhile, back on planet Earth, other newspaper critics generally warmed to the production’s energy, verve and (dare one say?) chutzpah. According to the RSC’s own audience surveys, this was the most enjoyed show of the season. Certainly on each of the three occasions I saw the production one was keenly aware of an audience having fun, even if that fun inevitably, sometimes painfully, arrived at the expense of some of the play’s darker complexities. This production, in short, had the great virtue of dividing opinion. At the risk of prejudicing my own response to the production, I attended a preshow director’s talk (Goold). I dwell here on some of the interesting comments made by Goold in this session not only because they did indeed affect my experience but also because, intentional fallacies notwithstanding, they seem worth archiving. Goold’s first assumption was that this is ‘‘a fiercely anti-Semitic play’’ peopled by universally flawed, even repellent characters. It was not a play that a director can approach in ‘‘a Peter Brook, clean way’’. The Merchant, he argued, needs modern period and colour, a local habitation and a name. The choice of Las Vegas clearly appealed for some of the analogical reasons sketched above, but also, I suspect, because the RSC has no tradition of asking its actors to perform Shakespeare in

As we like it? A collective review of Shakespeare's As You Like It (directed by Michael Boyd for the Royal Shakespeare Company) at the Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, 5 September 2009

This is an edited transcript of a review group (of about 75 people) which took place at the Shakespeare Centre, Stratford-upon-Avon, on 6 September 2009, the contributors having seen the Royal Shakespeare Companys production of As You Like It the previous evening. The discussion was designed to address the production and then to develop into a reflection on the processes of reviewing itself asking such questions as “how did the production speak to our times?”, “what is worth remembering about this production?”, “why is your opinion valuable?” and “what difference would you like your review to make?” Participants included journalists, theatre directors, theatre designers, performers, academics, graduate, undergraduate and high school students, and interested members of the public. In publishing these fragmented opinions and reflections, we are interested in creating a space in the theatrical archive for a polyphonic review, one that gathers a range of unattributed voices and, as far as possible, allows them to co-exist without hierarchy or resolution. Initially the discussion took place in small groups and then in a single, very large circle. The first 10 quotations below summarize group discussions; from that point on, individuals made contributions on any aspect of the production they wished to discuss.

Review of Troilus and Cressida (directed by Peter Stein) at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, September 2006

This production began with a paratextual surprise. The programme bore a startling epigraph from director Peter Stein: ‘‘I dedicate my work on this show to John Barton whose 1968 production influenced my vision of the play and my desire to do it.’’ Here, then, was a curiosity: a European auteur (presumably invited to stage a predictably shocking production) kow-towing to an RSC eminence gris. Any resemblance to a previous production is entirely non-coincidental. I cannot think of another occasion on which a director has so fully acknowledged his belatedness. Stein was earlier on record as saying: