The idyllic pastoral calm of the Mayslake Peabody Estate, the fifteen-year Oak Brook venue of the classically themed First Folio Theatre, lends its natural lightness to the many family picnics that tend to precede the evening’s play. That enveloping environmental gaiety is all part of the theater’s charm and appeal. First Folio, though dependent on the fine citizens of Chicago’s western suburbs, is equally reliant on those city-dwelling Chicagoans desperately wishing to escape the drudgery of concrete and Wrigleyville. But “The Merchant of Venice,” Shakespeare’s most popular problem play which just opened at First Folio, is a two-and-a-half-hour descent into drudgery, no matter how terrific the production might be.
Artistic Director Alison C. Vesely’s meandering “Merchant” gets lost in the play’s labyrinthine dramatic comedy structure, and settles for only playing nice. The production cannot shed the sweetness of the company’s suburban outdoor setting, and the result is dominating lukewarm kindness from every character, strangely including the demeaned, however villainous Shylock (Michael Goldberg). Yes, Shylock, the Jewish moneylender who demands, in retribution for unpaid debts, a pound of flesh from the Christian, Antonio (Michael Joseph Mitchell).
Shylock is a much more complicated character than many modern productions let on. For the first 300 years of the play’s life, the moneylender was played as a clownish, anti-Semitic caricature. Money, after all, was, for centuries, a dirty topic to discuss in plays. How many Shakespearean comedies or tragedies have you seen where debt is the chief catalyst? Shylock stereotypically drones on and on about money—at one point verbally devaluing his ingenue daughter, Jessica (Cassidy Stirtz) against his ducats—a borderline inhuman juxtaposition. But the primary reason “Merchant” is cited as being so far ahead of its time is Shylock’s famous monologue beginning, “Hath not a Jew eyes?”
Goldberg pulls out all the stops in his rendition of the iconic speech that, out of context, heralds equality. Because no matter how verse-obsessed an actor or company might be, this monologue will always be riddled with the most pregnant of pauses. Outside of this section, though, Goldberg’s Shylock is casually ambivalent—acting neither the clown nor the villain. The stakes for his character, who is, today, the dramatic core of “The Merchant of Venice” are remarkably low, and the ensuing drama, middling.
Angela Weber Miller’s Ann Davis’ scenic design offers an olive branch, keeping the set in dark browns and yellows and creating the spiked gates of the Jewish ghetto as the focal point. Michael McNamara’s lights are alternatively too bright and too dim, but when dealing with the uncertainty of the elements, that is an unavoidable side effect. Also, laced on stage are a number of highly receptive microphones that easily pick up the actors’ voices and send them booming outward. Such amplification in Christopher Kriz’s sound design is terribly distancing. It removes the audience from the actors and the actors from the actors.
First Folio, paying tribute to its name, practices the “Folio Method,” Patrick Tucker’s widely used word-focused system of realizing Shakespearean text with accuracy and clarity. And, to be sure, First Folio’s “Merchant of Venice” has no trouble with the text’s literal meanings. But most of the actors abandon the text beyond the outer shell of definition. They don’t inhabit it, breathe it, or gestate it. That is where the gripping drama or madcap comedy emanates from: complete submission to Shakespeare’s masterful language.
In compensation for the lack of vitality behind the words, the actors, like Kris Reilly’s Gratiano and Luke Daigle’s Lorenzo, unnecessarily seek to lift them up by inserting half-committed jokes and boyish pranks that offer the pretense of personal investment. They are also an inadvertent contributor to the light tonality that frustratingly bathes the play.
As Portia, a fiery young woman and the eventual lover of Bassanio, Melanie Keller is most effective and balanced in her scenes disguised as a male doctor in the Venetian court. Imposing masculinity on her character forces her otherwise strident voice to become grounded and authoritative. While playing typical Portia, though, Keller forces, in her voice and body, a perception of what it is to be classical—a perception that walks a fine line between proper and British.
However, while much of the acting on display is a Renaissance Faire approximation—not to mention Rachel Lambert’s costumes and the punctuating music, more evocative of the Middle Ages than the Elizabethan Era—Kevin McKillip and Cassidy Stirtz, as Bassanio and Jessica respectively, play their characters humanely and simply without overblown peculiarities or self-indulgence. The retrospective societal horrors of “The Merchant of Venice” are most alive in these two naturally innocent performers. (Johnny Oleksinski)
At Mayslake Peabody Estate, 1717 West 31st, Oak Brook, (630)986-8067. Through August 19. (Half-Priced Tickets)
Dear Mr. Oleksinski, While you are certainly welcome to your opinions, you are not welcome to your own facts. In your 22 years on this planet, it is too bad no one taught you to either read or to do research prior to putting yourself forward as an expert on history or drama. First, the reading part. In THREE different places in our program Angela Weber Miller is credited as the scenic designer. She is also credited as such in the press packet you were given. How you came up with our scenic painter, Ann Davis, as the scenic designer… Read more »
Mr. Rice, As an avid reader of not only New City but also the other wonderful publications that cover and help promote theatre in Chicago, I was looking forward to seeing your company’s production of The Merchant of Venice. Reading Mr. Oleksinski’s review did not dissuade me from this, however reading your attacking open letter did. The hostility presented makes me nervous to ever step foot on the grounds of your theatre for fear of what other anger driven rage I may have to endure. No matter what, I’d like to remind you that not only are those PBR drinking… Read more »
“Anger driver rage”? Really?
The hipster PBR thing was a bit of bating, but where was D. Rice incorrect? Outside of Oleksinski’s opinion of the show, he seemed to write an inaccurate piece – wouldn’t you be a bit annoyed if “Drowning Ophelia” was credited to Jonathan Berry (for example)?
Just curious.
– An avid theater goer.
While I’d love to see what kind of wonders Jonathan Berry could do with that script (seriously, great idea), I’m sure a simple email to the editor- which all of us have on a mystical excel document- could do the trick to change this. I think we all forget how often this happens. Hedy Weiss recently attributed the Hypocrite’s production of Six Characters to Graney, not its actual director- Kays. It was never fixed on the Sun Time’s site. Chris Jones, in a headline, actually misspelled Cyndi Lauper’s name about a week ago… Then these people open their magical excel… Read more »
JD, My irritation with Mr. Oleksinski’s inaccuracies and his carelessness in trying to flaunt historic knowledge that he does not possess may have led me to commit the very sin for which I was chastising him, that of being more concerned with being clever than fair. I question your use of the word “rage” extremely strongly, however. What in my response to Mr. Oleksinski’s inaccuracies implies anger to you, let alone “rage”? Did I threaten Mr. Oleksinksi? Did I suggest he was not welcome to review another production? Did I call him to task for his opinions of the actors?… Read more »
P.S.
JD, your second comment seems to indicate you think my irritation with the reviewer was simply over getting the designer’s name wrong. If you think that, you might want to reread my initial post and see how much time I spent on that issue vs. the other issue on which I was commenting. I was simply using that as another example of how the reviewer needed to spend more time being sure his reviews were accurate in ALL respects.
David, it’s rather telling that you can only argue directly on two rather small points in the review (a wrong name for one of the designers and a misidentification on Oleksinski’s part of the period of the costumes), choosing instead to go ad hominem when it comes to the actual content of the review. The things that you claim caused you to write the comment in the first place take up all of two sentences in the review and are afterthoughts to the overall impression, at best. Such mistakes are easily fixed, and JD is right that you could easily… Read more »
David…I haven’t seen First Folio’s production of Merchants, and will certainly not after reading your scathing response to Mr. Oleksinski’s review. I can understand you making a logical and rational argument to a review that you disagree with, but not unwarranted personal attacks against the reviewer (in addition to his entire generation). Regarding your attacks of Mr. Oleksinski’s historical research, you may want to take a peak at your high school history books (or watch a few episodes of the Tudors). The following was cut and pasted from your website…“Shakespeare’s most controversial play is a complex tale of hatred, love,… Read more »
David Rice Wow. I saw your (yes, YOUR, Mr. Executive Director) production of Merchant of Venice – as I have seen MANY folio productions in the past. I happen to agree with a vast, vast majority of what this reviewer said. What does that say about me? In fact, next time my wife and I want to see a show at first folio, rest assured we will be going out for a PBR instead. To attack an unknown reviewer on what seems to be just another website polluting the blogosphere is absurd. You are the face of an established, equity… Read more »