It was always going to be difficult following Trevor Nunn's National Theatre Merchant of Venice. But one hoped for slightly more from Loveday Ingram's new RSC touring production than a romantic reading that treats the play as a fairytale in Edwardian dress: in a post-Holocaust world, let alone one where differing concepts of global justice confront us daily, it is difficult to return to such blithe innocence.
Ingram's Venice is a world shorn of darkness. The action starts in what might be the leather-chaired lounge of a five star hotel, with tinkling cocktail music in the background, but there is little sign that Ian Gelder's sedate Antonio is utterly besotted by Bassanio: even the normally rowdy hangers-on look as if they would be more at home at a church social.
And when Gelder's Antonio confronts Ian Bartholomew's low key Shylock there is little hint of accumulated resentments: not much sense of Shylock's "ancient grudge" and, rather than spit on his adversary's gaberdine, this Antonio seems more likely to admire its fine cut.
As Nunn reminded us, this is partly a play about conflicting value systems: one in which Christian hedonism confronts Hebraic faith. But, as Peter Zadek and David Thacker showed in their updated productions, it is also a play about money and the ruthless capitalist operations of an international trading city. Little business, however, gets done in Ingram's production and even the big emotional climaxes are ducked: if you are going to show Shylock returning to his house to find that his daughter has fled with his ducats, you need more than a tiny cry of "Jessica", as if he has forgotten his latchkey.
Significantly, it is when it comes to romantic feeling that this production seems most at home. Hermione Gulliford makes an attractive and sympathetic Portia and, even if she acquires a daunting Thatcherite briskness in the trial scene, she shows unusual tolerance of Bassanio's sexual waywardness.
Paul Hickey also makes Bassanio seem something more than a vulgar oppourtunist: when, in gazing at Portia's likeness he cries "but her eyes, how could he see to do them?", he seems overcome by true feeling. Belmont, in short, comes off best; and even Michael Gardiner's Prince of Arragon adds to the gaiety by entering with a rose clamped between his teeth, and then snatching it back when he is humiliated.
But it is a measure of this production's fairytale ap proach that it ends not with a sense of jeopardised relationships but with a repeat chorus of "Tell me where is fancy bred." There's nothing wrong with charm; but we have lived through too much history for this to be the dominant note of this deeply ambivalent and disturbing problem play.
In rep until November 24. Box office: 020-7638 8891.
