RSC 1965 Season: The Jew of Malta, The Merchant of Venice and Love’s Labour’s Lost
Plays and Players,
June 1965, Peter Roberts
The spectacular achievement of last year’s quatercentenary season of ‘The Wars of the Roses’, recently enjoying an equally spectacular success on BBC television, is bound to take some painful living up to this year at Stratford. Concentration on the histories for a start gave the 1964 offerings a coherence and unity that it would be difficult indeed to follow up in 1965. It’s true that Marlowe’s ‘Jew of Malta’ staged alongside ‘The Merchant of Venice’ gives sceptics a rare chance to sample in the theatre the links and parallels which introduction and footnotes to both plays have always rammed down the reader’s throat, particularly when they are staged here with the same director, the same designer and the same actor: Clifford Williams, Ralph Koltai and Eric Porter. But in spite of these shared variations on a single Jewish theme, the opening trio of productions (John Barton’s ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost was the first) remained three isolated productions of varying success that necessarily missed the escalating excitements of last year’s history chronicles.
John Barton, whose academic reputation as an authority on wayward Elizabethan texts was so enhanced on those very chronicles last year, would seem to be the ideal hand to disentangle the convoluted word play of ‘Love’s Labour’s and make it meaningful to a modern audience much as Robert Graves was hired to do on the National Theatre’s ‘Much Ado’. In the event, though, where one had complained of Zeffirelli taking too many directorial liberties with Graves’ version of that text, one felt bound to think Barton had taken too few with his own ‘Love’s Labour’s’. The approach, in fact, is quite the contrary to that taken in the last major revival when Michael Langham last year enlivened the vast wastes of Chichester’s open stage with the whirling costumes of his Canadian production in which the play’s poetry fairly belted along. Where Langham, in fact, had elected to conduct the work prestissimo Barton has enough confidence in the text to take it at a steady adagio. The result is a production that is much easier to respect and admire than it is to enjoy.
In the first half, especially, the director’s resolute determination to avoid visual frills led to a slackening of pace that threatened to elicit an equal slackening of interest. Gradually, though, it’s very slowness exerts a power over the spectator so that he is lulled into a feeling of unhurried timelessness that allows him to relish the word-play, the in-jokes, the formal counterpoint of the idealised and the real life. What in particular helps to bring about this process is the dramatic licence of John Bradley’s lighting which illuminates the production as though it took place on a single day. The ‘Sleeping Beauty’-like wooded background of Sally Jacobs’ set is dappled with the bright morning sunshine in the early scenes, with the longer shadows of the afternoon following – both to be finally eclipsed by nightfall which, appropriately enough, coincides with the announcement of the French king’s death and the play’s consequent abrupt and final shift of mood.
One of the consequences of taking the play at so even a pace is that none of the characters emerge as overall leads. This production is no more Berowne and Rosaline’s evening than it is Ferdinand and the Princess’s or indeed Don Adriano and Jaquenetta’s. In this last part Patsy Byrne gives a modified version of her Audrey in ‘As You Like It’ and as such her line in buxom bucolic charm remains irresistible. Charles Thomas and Janet Suzman give Berowne and Rosaline’s love–making an appropriate light and playful touch, but of the quartet of lovers the deepest impression if made by Glenda Jackson’s Princess of France. There is a certain hard almost metallic edge to her delivery of the verse which at first seems uncalled for but which it is soon evident is an essential quality of her stage personality and which distinguishes her work from twenty other young actresses who might tackle the role with equal competence. Tony Church and Timothy West split pedagogic hairs with gentle humour as Holofernes and Sir Nathaniel whilst David Waller makes an ideal Dull – his repeated basso profondo ‘twas a pricket’ that punctuates the Holofernes-Sir Nathaniel bickering being one of the most securely wrought comedy touches of the evening. Stanley Lebor, deputising at short notice for William Squire as Don Adriano, plays the fantastical Spaniard with the very minimum of fantastic flourish and Philip Meredith manages to render the unbearable precious smartness of Moth just about bearable.
As Clifford Williams explained in these pages last month, his productions of ‘The Jew of Malta’ and ‘The Merchant of Venice’ were not conceived at the outset as a joint enterprise. The success of the Marlowe production at the Aldwych which in fact brought about this Stratford venture has been seen by some as a freak success in which the public has unaccountably enjoyed a send-up production of a great and mighty play. This seems to me a total misconception of ‘The Jew of Malta’. It is not a lofty work in which nuggets of ‘great’ poetry have become buried in a ramshackle plot. The swift and sudden about-turns of its story-line are in fact a legitimate dramatic shorthand of the creator of black farce and one of the great merits of Williams’ production of the play is that he recognises this as much as he recognises and is able to put across the staggering modernity of Marlowe’s satirical outlook.
What, however, is certainly true about the Stratford revival is that it is ten times broader than the Aldwych production and begs for laughter where the other invited it. The replacement of Glenda Jackson as the courtesan, Bellamira, by Patsy Byrne is characteristic of the new slant of the production. Where Miss Jackson gave Malta’s answer to the femme fatale, Miss Byrne offers a down-at-heel Cleopatra whose command of male admirers is more desperate than arrogant. A very funny performance, but doesn’t it paint Marlowe’s satirical lily?
The play’s clergy are given a nice grubby Chaucerian touch by Tim Wylton, David Waller and Helen Weir, and Michael Pennington and Peter Geddis as Abigail’s Christian lovers are both improvements on the Aldwych production. I can’t say the same for the new Abigail, Katharine Barker, unless her elocuted delivery is another deliberately added comic touch. But as she gives exactly the same performance as the infinitely less attractive Jessica in ‘The Merchant of Venice’ I conclude that it is not. Tony Church and Timothy West repeat their excellent performances as the Governor and Pilia-Borza and Ralph Koltai’s set continues to get its effect with the most extraordinary economy of means. Its sun-bleached texture conjures up the Mediterranean setting very beautifully and the flexibility of the basic shape enables it to be reassembled effortlessly to suggest the play’s swiftly altering locations.
One or the advantages of producing Marlowe’s play is that it has all the freshness of a work that is revived far too seldom. One of the disadvantages of taking on Shakespeare’s ‘Merchant of Venice’ is that it has all the staleness of a piece of work that is done far too often. Countless end-of-term productions, amateur revivals and too many indifferent professional productions have rendered it the hoariest of pop classics which must, I suppose, inevitably reappear soon as a musical. It is to Clifford Williams’ credit that he doesn’t turn the play inside out in search of mere novelty but allows interest to accrue largely from its juxtaposition with Marlowe’s play, which has the effect here of presenting Shakespeare as the Establishment dramatist – at least as regards his treatment of the Christians. Where the Knights of Malta are scathingly exposed as hypocritical opportunists, Shakespeare was treading on no Elizabethan toes to make an overt comment on his Venetian delinquents that would offend as the supreme irony of the Governor of Malta’s final vote of thanks to heaven must have offended. The young fleshpots of Venice who all have a ready eye to marry where it most suits their pocket are given a thick romantic gloss which this production does not attempt to crack.
Peter McEnery accordingly gives us a romantic jeune premier of a Bassanio whose slender figure has clearly awakened the fond attachment of Brewster Mason’s fatherly Antonio, which certainly goes some way to explain the merchant’s doting folly in financing his beloved young friend’s exploits. In this production the Belmont that his money-raising venture takes him to is a most elegant spot – the Portia of Janet Suzman is a sherry-sipping chatelaine with a handsome line in morning gowns (by Nadine Baylis) and an elegant blonde Tintoretto hair-do. Nerissa, played by the busy Patsy Byrne, is upgraded from personal hand-maiden to lady-companion and the servants sport a smart livery and glide over a shiny marble floor that suits all the scenes except the moonlight raptures of Lorenzo and Jessica which really do need a decent bit of grass.
Things are not quite so affluent in Venice – the Duke has no Clerk of Court to read Bellario’s letter and has to do the job himself and Launcelot Gobbo is badly in need of braces to keep up his tights, which caused some draughty moments at the first performance. In this part Charles Kay gives a mercurial performance with a Liverpool accent and Beatle-like hair arrangement light enough not to strike too anachronistic a note.
For connoisseurs of great performances the interest of the two productions, of course, was in the doubling of Shylock and Barabas by Eric Porter. It would seem to be a field day for the showy virtuoso actor which Eric Porter in fact is not. In major roles at Stratford he has shown a remarkable restraint in refusing to hug the limelight with any performance that smacked of self-indulgence. As must be expected, then, he distinguishes very ably between the two Jews without out-revelling Clive Revill as Barabas on the one hand or coming up with a brand-new Shylock like the young man Peter O’Toole presented at Stratford a few seasons ago. In both parts, though, he is very satisfying and you can’t ask for more than that.
But the International Theatre Institute had better call for a ten-year moratorium of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ once this season is over.