Abigail Graham calls out antisemitism and much more in her radical reworking of Shakespeare's problem comedy

Alone on a darkened stage a young woman lights a candelabra, singing Black Eyed Peas with the band (led by Zac Gvi): "I got a feeling / That tonight's gonna be a good night… Mazel tov." Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, tense as she plans elopement with her Christian lover Lorenzo, is hoping tonight will prove a good night.

From the get-go, director Abigail Graham finds in Shakespeare’s play, not an antisemitic rant, but rather a condemnation of entitlement, racism and sexism. If to achieve this she treats scenes and lines as moveable feasts, the compelling results justify her take. She is Jewish, like four of her uniformly excellent cast and assistant director Tash Hyman, so casting Jewish actors in the three Jewish roles and more gives a special resonance.

As Eleanor Wyld’s sympathetically vulnerable Jessica slips away, a posse of booze-fuelled guys in carnival masks invade the space, oozing machismo. No wonder Launcelot Gobbo, lately Shylock’s servant, cowers at their feet, hoping to curry favour with new Christian master Bassanio (convincing wide boy Michael Marcus) by dissing "the Jew". The gang echo Gobbo, chanting "Jew" with increasing aggression.

That Aaron Vodovoz, who plays Gobbo, is Israeli and Ben Caplan is Jewish, matters not. Caplan gets to play Shylock’s wingman Tubal, though his main impact is as vicious ringleader Solanio, and later as Venice’s stern and evidently antisemitic Duke. Like most of the Christians, he calls Shylock "the Jew", rarely using his name.

It falls to Portia, Shakespeare’s fabulously wealthy heroine, to display the most overt level of racism. Sophie Melville’s brattish Portia shudders with revulsion receiving Daniel Bowerbank’s stately, swarthy suitor Prince of Morocco (Bowerbank also excels as an impudent Lorenzo). But Melville finds the vulnerability, too, in Portia’s predicament as prisoner to her late father’s will that she marry the suitor who solves his riddle and hand over her inheritance.

Graham amplifies this by playing the scene where suitors line up to try their luck as an embarrassingly OTT game show. The golden prize is a glitzy, sexily-dressed Portia displayed on a podium. Although her relief is palpable when the ‘right man’ makes the right choice, it’s clear her fortune is the main attraction for him and his affections lie elsewhere – with Michael Gould’s pliant Antonio, the eponymous merchant who has financed this venture for the heiress.

Adrian Schiller’s Shylock displays his dignity in every interaction with the Christian bullies, from his measured response to Antonio’s first request for money to his bitter words making it clear he will revenge the betrayal of Jessica’s flight. He builds on his anguished reaction to the news she has exchanged his engagement ring from his late wife Leah for a pet monkey. “I would not have given it for a wilderness of monkeys”, spoken over a solo violin, is heartbreaking.

'The Jew' continues dignified and purposeful, ready to cut and weigh the notorious pound of flesh, unmoved by the sight of Antonio in a wheelchair. But Portia, having made a barnstorming entrance disguised as hot young lawyer Balthazar, is hardly super cool when she turns on Shylock, panting with indignation, fired by Bassanio’s cruel deceit.

It’s in the spirit of the spitefulness of Christian Venice that, as Shylock is thrust off the stage into the audience for his forced conversion to Christianity, Antonio almost garrottes him with the ‘gift’ of the St Christopher from his own neck. Jessica looks on grief-stricken as her father looks to take his own way out. That’s almost where Graham leaves it, excising the ‘comic relief’ that normally follows.

It’s left to Jessica to extinguish the candles. Her unaccompanied voice ends the play – not with an upbeat rap, but with ‘Kol Nidrei’ (‘All Vows’), the Hebrew prayer for repentance sung at the start of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

So was tonight a good night? Not for Shylock or Jessica, but for the audience, for a fresh perspective on Shakespeare’s antisemitism? Yes, mazel tov, tonight was a good night.

By Judi Herman

Photos by Tristram Kenton

The Merchant of Venice runs until Saturday 9 April. 7.30pm & 2pm. £15-£59 (seating), £5 (standing). Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, Shakespeare's Globe, SE1 9DT. 020 7401 9919. shakespearesglobe.com