THE MERCHANT OF VENICE (Shakespeare Happy Hours)***

                              

By Imogen

Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfeUxcIOW68&t=2012s

Available until: Indefinitely

Shakespeare Happy Hours is a very good idea because it cuts all the Shakespeare plays down to an hour and a half. I think that’s quite enough. Who wants to sit through four hours of talking? Of course, when I play Portia I want to do the longest possible version so I get paid more but if I’m watching I prefer it to be as short as possible.

There are a lot of bad things in this play. A lot of people are uncomfortable with the antisemitism and I can understand why. It’s not very nice. But I don’t believe the play really sets out to tell us all that antisemitism is okay. It’s not saying that Christians are good and Jews are bad. The Christians are just as bad as the Jews – if not worse. Shylock does what he feels like he needs to do to survive but the other characters play dishonest tricks just for the fun of it. I think the play is really saying that everyone is capable of doing bad things. I think Shakespeare is telling us to watch these people and make up your own mind. Well, I’ve made up their mind and I think they’re all stupid cruel liars. I do quite like the idea of dressing up and tricking my boyfriend but I think if it worked I would hate him for betraying me and if it didn’t work I would hate him for being so clever so I’ve decided not to do that.

I really liked Kara Arena who plays Portia. She is very pretty and very talented and she should have been in a lot more of the Shakespeare Happy Hours. She wears headphones to use Zoom and makes them look like accessories which is really important because it means we can follow the story and not get distracted because someone from the 15^th century or whenever it is has headphones which haven’t been invented yet. She looked very pretty in disguise too but she also looked very different. I knew who she was but I could believe her idiot boyfriend didn’t.

Most of the boys are idiots and I wouldn’t marry any of them except Alex Hernandez who was in the ensemble because he is really hot and he wears nice clothes and he acts very well too. Bassanio (Josh Innerst) and Gratiano (Dylan Kammerer) were both very silly but they are good characters though I do think the girls could do better. Jessica (Celeste Perez) is very pretty but I don’t think she is a nice person at all to steal from her dad. I would never steal from my dad. If he won’t give me any money I just ask Uncle Gareth. He doesn’t always say yes but he says it often enough for it to be worth trying.

Salerio and Solanio are a bit annoying but Natasha Magigi and Christine Penney were quite funny so they weren’t as annoying as they could have been. I think they would make me want to scream if I met them but they are good in a play. Usually in Happy Hours there are lots of women playing men and sometimes men playing women but apart from Salerio and Solanio they kept to the right genders and that is probably a good choice with all the gender swapping, it helps make things clearer. The Prince of Morocco was really good too, all creepy and mysterious. I’m not sure who played him but it was probably Jerome Hamann-Hardiman. He’s one of those actors who can stand or move in a different way and you kind of don’t recognise them because they’ve become a different person. That’s how I want to be. Onstage anyway. I would be extremely cross if I wasn’t recognised at the stage door.

Joel Colodner who plays Shylock was really compelling. He’s a really bad man (because of how he behaves, not his race) but there is something about him that kind of makes you want to do what he says. He’s one of those people who can talk you into anything. Like those really horrible boys who go to Smokers’ Corner at break or the really horrible boys who actually talk to Jack and I know I shouldn’t go out with them because they’re twits (with a slightly different spelling) and they would probably do something really awful like forget to hold the door open for me or expect me to pay for my own food but somehow I do end up in McDonalds with them and of course I’m totally right and it was as awful as I thought but I do it anyway. Not that I want to kiss Shylock, he’s much too old.