Stage : Holbrook Adds Strength to an Uncertain ‘Merchant of Venice’

What’s a director to do?

If he tampers too much with a play, he gets taken to task for not hewing to the writer’s intent. Here, however, is a case of a writer’s intent being so open to question that interpretation becomes necessity.

Of course, nowhere is it written that “The Merchant of Venice” can’t be done exactly as Shakespeare wrote it. But since Shakespeare left so many plot strands untied and so many viewpoints, not to say time frames, at odds with one another, results can be mixed.

Director Jack O’Brien’s production of this prickly play, which opened Friday on the Old Globe’s outdoor Festival stage, does a curious thing. It substitutes updating for a point of view. His “Merchant” is set in a modern Venice where waiters carry intercoms and paparazzi take flash photos, but telephones don’t exist. Forget about calling all ships at sea, let alone Antonio’s.

Suspend your disbelief.

“The Merchant of Venice” doesn’t stand the test of realism. It never did. Critic and scholar Harley Granville Barker called it a fairy tale, and that still seems the only reasonable assumption. Without it, Shylock’s insistence on his pound of flesh--the collateral required in jest at first and then in earnest from the merchant Antonio against a loan of 3,000 ducats--would never hold up in court. Especially not since the money’s there with which to repay it.

It may not be Antonio’s money, but it is that of his profligate friend Bassanio, for whom Antonio borrowed the ducats in the first place. The funds may belong to Bassanio’s bride Portia, who, in a cavalier display of her own inherited wealth, offers to buy back the bond at twice, thrice, even four times the price, but so what?

Why does the court uphold the Jewish moneylender Shylock’s rejection of the money? Because without it there is no play. With it, there’s not much logic. But then where is the logic in a Portia who dons male clothes and comes to court to argue the case against Shylock, outwitting all of the men there?

Is this a blow for feminism? If so, what can one make of Shylock’s daughter, Jessica, who not only elopes with the Christian Lorenzo (Bo Foxworth), but also seems to buy his favor by stealing a dowry from her father? Is it any wonder Shylock is half-crazed and ready for revenge against all so-called Christians?

O’Brien’s decision to let the text speak for itself does no more than Shakespeare did to answer the questions. The result is a production that feels more rudderless than reason dictates it can be. What the director goes for instead of subjective interpretation is a look of underlying corruption.

Ralph Funicello’s design of graying old archways abutting new ones is architecturally striking, even if a background gondola and gondolier remain reprehensibly unused. Peter Maradudin’s lights provide lovely nuance, but it is Lewis Brown’s costumes, particularly the array of magnificent gowns in which he bedecks Kandis Chappell’s imperious Portia, that take it away. This is decadence on the march, disguised as style.

Chappell makes a strong, cool and detached Portia, while Geoffrey Lower’s Bassanio is all simple-minded warmth and whimsy. Richard Easton’s Antonio, an enigmatic fellow at best, looks like a man of slippery morals who freely admits to slanderous (and baseless) provocations of Shylock. James R. Winder gives his playful Gratiano more intellect than he deserves and June Gable’s no-nonsense Nerissa is an earthy, Bette Middlerish accomplice for Portia.

Others fare less well. Jonathan McMurtry overshoots the Prince of Arragon (albeit hilariously), while Aldo Billingslea doesn’t have much of a clue about being a Prince of Morocco. And Andrea Fitzgerald plays a surface Jessica with not even mildly conflicted inner emotions. This is a girl only a father could miss.

But, as that tormented father, Hal Holbrook gives a vaulting, grandly actorish performance that never mistakes grandiloquence for true grandeur. His Shylock is a deeply moral, deeply guarded man whose emotions, including a passionate anger, are so tightly immured within that he may well have forgotten how to love a daughter--until too late.

The severity of the court’s sentence, that part about becoming a Christian, is a sentence of death on such an unbending, proud man. And his disappearance from the play’s final scenes would tend to support this, while not spelling it out.

If the rest of the production were as eloquent with its silences, the Globe’s “Merchant” would be a stunner. As it is, in spite of its faintly Jewish original music (by Bob James), the classiness of its design, the power of that Holbrook performance, it remains unanchored and strangely flavorless. This is apparently one time when Shakespeare’s intent, alone and unaided, is not quite enough.

‘The Merchant of Venice’

Richard Kneeland: Duke of Venice/Tubal

Aldo Billingslea: Prince of Morocco

Jonathan McMurtry: Prince of Arragon

Richard Easton: Antonio, a merchant of Venice

Geoffrey Lower: Bassanio

Kandis Chappell: Portia

Hal Holbrook: Shylock

James R. Winker: Gratiano

Bo Foxworth: Lorenzo

June Gable: Nerissa

Andrea Fitzgerald: Jessica

Marc Wong: Launcelot Gobbo

Jim Morley: Old Gobbo

Henry J. Jordan: Salerio

Nicholas Martin: Solanio

Shakespeare’s play presented by the Old Globe Theatre. Director Jack O’Brien. Sets Ralph Funicello. Lights Peter Maradudin. Costumes Lewis Brown. Composer Bob James. Sound Jeff Ladman. Stage manager Douglas Pagliotti. Assistant stage manager Maria Carrera.