This summer, the Atlanta Shakespeare Company at the Shakespeare Tavern will perform the Bard’s most controversial play, “The Merchant of Venice.” With its challenging themes of racism and antisemitism, the play continues to provoke heated discussion and ongoing scholarship.
This production also presents a new twist, with an all-female-identifying cast of actors from the theater series LadyShakes.
“The Merchant of Venice” opens July 30 and runs through August 14. Director Katie Grace Brown joined “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom along with actor Rivka Levin, who portrays the moneylender Shylock.
Interview highlights follow below.
A brief synopsis of “The Merchant of Venice:”
“Antonio, the merchant of Venice, and Bassanio, his best friend, are needing funds to fund Bassanio going to try to get himself a wealthy wife, Portia,” explained Brown. “Antonio’s money is all wrapped up in sea adventures, and so they go to Shylock to ask for money – who is very reasonably not unwilling to do so, but skeptical because they have treated him so badly in the past. But he does offer to lend the money with a bond that’s very unheard of before… ‘If you don’t repay this money, I will take a pound of flesh instead.'”
She went on, “Shylock doesn’t particularly believe that that will come to pass. Antonio is very confident in his sea ventures. So they make that bond, Bassanio goes to Belmont and woos Portia, and while that is happening, all of Antonio’s vessels are lost at sea.”
A reparative reading of the Jewish moneylender Shylock, troubling to many theatergoers:
“Shakespeare did him, honestly, a favor of not making him perfect. If he was the world’s kindest man and most patient man, and entirely sympathetic, I think the message would be a little too on the nose of, ‘Why are these other characters being so hateful to him, given what a magnificent human he is?'” Levin reflected. “The fact is, he is not a magnificent human. He is impatient. He is trodden down and is not always gentle… Even as a flawed human being, he has owed the dignity of being treated as human.”
She added, “I think that’s Shakespeare’s point – he’s a controversial character because he is not perfect. And so many of his imperfections could be played up by a director with an agenda and have been historically played up by a director with an agenda to show how calculating and money-loving the Jews are. And I think Shakespeare’s point is, even with all of that, you still need to treat him like a human being.”
On the impetus behind LadyShakes Theater Company:
“The first LadyShakes was a series of scenes, fights – I cannot recall whether it was the first or second year that we also did a madrigal – but mostly, it was born of the recognition that even though Shakespeare has written some marvelous, strong, opinionated female characters, the ratio of female characters to male characters is pretty wide,” said Levin. “If you are casting gender-traditional, women don’t get an awful lot of opportunity in most of the Shakespeare plays. So it was the brainchild of our friend Dani Herd, and Dani organized this evening of scenes directed by, produced by, performed by women, and women got to play roles they typically would not get to play, such as King John or Hamlet… It was extremely well-received.
Brown said, “I wanted to do ‘The Merchant of Venice’ in particular as all women because it is such a gritty, complicated play. Having a room full of very sensitive, brave, supportive female-identifying artists. We say no space can be truly safe… but I can strive to make every space I curate as brave as possible, and having a bunch of women who cannot wait to tackle these roles, such as Rivka playing Shylock, that was previously not in the cards necessarily, has been the bravest space I can imagine.”
The Atlanta Shakespeare Company presents “The Merchant of Venice,” a LadyShakes production, at the Shakespeare Tavern from July 30 – Aug. 14. Tickets and more information are available at www.shakespearetavern.com/on-stage/company/the-merchant-of-venice-a-ladyshakes-production/.
