Pound of flesh
Hong Kong Players, The Merchant of Venice, Fringe Club Theatre, January 24-28.
H ONG KONG Players' production of The Mer chant of Venice, directed by Mike Ingham, certainly contains some surprises, two of which alter certain aspects of the play considerably.
Firstly, Shylock and his daughter, Jessica, are Chinese rather than Jewish. This presents no great problem, with regard to the play's issues, since one abhorrent prejudice, anti-Semitism, is replaced with another, racism. Shakespeare's Jew becomes a ''foreigner'', and certain lines, such as ''And spit upon my Jewish gabardine'', are omitted altogether.
Elizabethans generally accepted the convention that Jews were cunning, villainous and inhuman beings - stock objects of hatred and ridicule. Shakespeare's firm conception of character led him beyond that convention, though, to create Shylock as a very real person; and he is still just as real for being Chinese.
The offensive behaviour towards this Shylock by the play's Venetians makes an audience in Hong Kong distinctly uncomfortable, to say the least.
Thus, an important point about prejudice is forcefully made; moreover, it is driven further home by a strikingly sincere performance by Abraham Lee, who plays Shylock as a calculating businessman.
Now let us move on to the production's second major surprise, which is to do with the fairness of the trial scene. Generations of literature students have had to consider the proposition that the trial scene in The Merchant of Venice is a theatrical triumph, but a judicial failure.
The odds stacked against Shylock are written into the Venetian laws concerning aliens; and director Ingham has tried to improve the quality of justice by having the trial conducted by a genuine lawyer, instead of Portia appearing ''dressed like a doctor of laws''. Unfortunately, such a radical change transforms the scene into a theatrical failure for a number of reasons.
Dramatic tensions evaporate the instant we see that it is not Portia dispensing ''justice''. Gone, too, are the moments of fun when, for instance, Portia, by now married to Bassanio but unrecognised by him in court, chastises him for saying he would sacrifice everything, including his wife, to save Antonio from Shylock's knife.
Furthermore, the change denies the actress playing Portia the chance to consummate her role, and it denies the audience the tremendous pleasure of seeing her do so, particularly when she is as gifted as Elizabeth Case.
There was a notable Bassanio in Jim Howard's fine performance, and there was a delightfully vivacious Nerissa, Portia's waiting-woman, played by Christine Fleming.
The general quality of acting among those not already mentioned was something of a mixed bag, but then acting is never easy - especially in Shakespeare.
