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'Merchant' presented with all its complexities Oregon Shakespeare Festival Antonio (Michael Elich) bravely tells Shylock to take his "pound of flesh" as his good friend Bassanio (Jeff Cummings) tries to save him in "The Merchant of Venice," which opened the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's outdoor season Friday. Strong performances carry OSF production T he thing about "The Merchant of Venice" is, it plays lighter than it reads. In the shadow of the Holocaust, it is impossible not to see Shakespeare's play though a very dark lens indeed. The stage - and our imaginations - are dominated by the villainous Jewish moneylender, Shylock. Yet on-stage, "Merchant" unfolds as the romantic comedy that, after all, it is. Despite the baggage with which Shylock arrives in the 21st century, he remains a comic if complex villain. Young love still triumphs. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival's production, directed by Michael Donald Edwards, opened Friday night in the festival's Elizabethan Theatre. It offers good laughs, although few real belly laughs, in a sensitive, intelligent interpretation. The production is propelled by sparkling performances by Robin Goodrin Nordli, as Portia, and Tony DeBruno, as Shylock. The actors wear modern clothes. Costumes and sets suggest late 19th-century New York City, maybe, with a dash of Gilded Age opulence. When the festival presented the play a decade ago, some Jews objected to elements of the production. This time out, the festival mounted a major public relations outreach, with talks in synagogues and at the festival, a video, an eight-page dramaturgical supplement. This is altogether appropriate. Can there be any doubt that a line stretches from Jew-baiting Elizabethans to the Nazi extermination camps? Edwards told this reviewer that by pointedly not making Shylock a religiously observant Jew, he sought to soften the religious libel, making Shylock into a bad guy who happens to be an ethnic Jew. Whether that's entirely satisfactory is up to each playgoer to decide. Anti-Semitism was a fact of Renaissance life, and it's in the warp and woof of the play. "Merchant" is one of Shakespeare's richest plays, combining stock comic elements with layers of irony. Looming over everything is Shylock. The story centers around the pound of flesh pledged by Antonio, the merchant of the title, as surety for a loan of 3,000 ducats to Bassanio, his friend, by Shylock. Bassanio needs the money to court Portia, a wealthy, beautiful young woman. (Irony one: materialistic Christians despise the Jew for his materialism.) Shylock despises Christians, which is to say everybody. He practices usury, or charging of interest, forbidden to Christians for centuries by the Church and thus relegated to Jews. DeBruno's disturbing Shylock is a remarkable creation, vengeful, anti-heroic and all too human. He seems to live in some lonely landscape in between being a Machiavelian dastard and a figure of pathos. When, his arm raised in an almost biblical gesture of defiance, he thunders for the vengeance he believes is his, he touches something in us that's downright creepy. We see the injuries done Shylock, his love for his daughter, his attachment to a ring given him by his dead wife. Many, Edwards among them, believe that Shylock sprang from Shakespeare's imagination so fully human that he escaped for all time from the confines of the play. If that's true - and it may be - it makes our problem more acute. The defeat of a cardboard cutout with horns and a big nose would be one thing. That of a three-dimensional man (if you prick him, does he not bleed?) is another. And yet "Merchant" is not finally Shylock's story, but Portia's. This was the first play in which Shakespeare gave a woman the most lines. She is the agency through whom three separate plots are resolved after Bassanio's love for her sets everything in motion. Nordli's Portia begins as a desirable prize, then grows to take over the last half of the play, saving Antonio, dazzling the swells, sealing Shylock's fate. It's a fascinating arc from mere major babe to strong, resourceful Shakespearean heroine, and Nordli nails it. The play finally resists any attempts at pigeon-holing. Anti-Semitism was never the force driving it. But softening Shylock too much wouldn't do, either. If Shylock were to become a figure of pathos (he doesn't quite), it would wreck the character of Portia. This is a woman who arranges Shylock's death (he's spared only by the generosity of Antonio) and costs him half his fortune and a forced conversion to Christianity. In the end, the generous spirit of young love wins out over rigid, money-loving legalism. "Merchant" continues to expose seismic faults of culture and the human spirit. This production seems true to that complex landscape, managing to entertain as it disturbs, which is no small accomplishment. Reach reporter Bill Varble at 776-4478 or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.