The production marked the 500^th anniversary of the Venetian Ghetto, to which Jews were restricted in 1516, and the 400^th year of Shakespeare’s death, bringing together Shakespeare’s troubling comedy and the place of segregation upon which all subsequent ghettos have been based and named.

But the Ghetto also provided a crossroads for the meeting not only of Jews from across Europe, but also the interaction of Jews and non-Jews. And this remarkable event, the first time a play by Shakespeare has been performed in the Ghetto Nuovo, still inhabited by Jewish people, also brought together languages, acting styles, music and dance, beautiful costumes, performers, audiences and members of the public in a moving celebration of both common humanity and a reminder of our abiding cruelty and exclusion for six magical performances.

The most obviously striking thing about this production was the place and occasion. Without the memorial of the imposition of the Ghetto on the Jewish population, the Campo, with its irregular shape, its cistern and tree, and especially the palazzos and their "ears" (I mean their casements) and the public space of the event, including the restaurants, would have been enchanting. In the context of 500 years of the Ghetto and the 400^th year of Shakespeare's death, this adaptation of The Merchant of Venice was overwhelmingly powerful and moving as a theatrical experience. The music was unfailingly appropriate, from the rococo trumpet that heralded the Prince of Morocco through the lovely ensemble "Tell me where is fancy bred...", the beautiful duet for tenor and baritone, to the spine-chilling chorus before the trial scene. Music and voice interweaved in an echoing harmony reinforced by the walls around us. And threaded through that rough magic was the presence of the people living in the Ghetto, both ghosts of the past and also shadowy presences, equally spectators and participants in an event that recalled and reenacted the past even as it made us feel the force of our troubled present.

I saw parts of two performances from beyond the barriers, and one from the middle of the front row. Strangely, I found my perspective from the sidelines more thought-provoking, more challenging, more moving, as if this performance really needed to be seen obliquely for its full impact and resonance to be appreciated. This arose, I think, from the public nature of the space--with all its historical, racial and religious resonances--which allowed performer and audience not only to share the same space, but also to interact in fluid and at times quite provocative, potentially disruptive ways, as people entered and left the square, stopping in surprise and (one hopes) delight at the magical moments of light and shade, music and voice, colour and movement unfolding before them. I loved being able to see the ghostly figures of the actors "off-stage" moving through the dim light at the back.

I think it is a pity that adherence to conventional notions of audience, actor and interloper/stranger and the demands of commerce (in this of all plays) meant that there were any barriers at all, any privileging of some spectators above others. Imagine a performance with no such barriers, in which the relation between Shakespeare, actor and public were entirely fluid and generous.

The first night I saw the performance from behind the barrier I was myself surprised by some dozen little black urchins, who surrounded me, pressing against me with their wiry, eager bodies as they strained to make sense of the unexpected spectacle before them. I suspect they had never seen a play before, let alone one as visually ravishing as this one. They chattered and yelped in surprise and delight. My first impulse was to tell them to be quiet (of course I had no idea how to do that in Italian) but then I caught myself--I recalled that this is precisely what theatre was and is meant to be: a sharing of surprise and delight at the capacity of human bodies and voices to entertain, enchant, challenge and move to tears. I also recalled my home country, South Africa, with its thousands of poor black children who have no opportunity to be caught and caught up in such magic. And I was reminded of my own deep complicity in qualities of prejudice and racism that are an extension of the issues dealt with in Shakespeare's play.

The use of different languages—Italian, Venetian dialect, Hebrew, Venetian Yiddish and English—forced the audience to confront difference and affinity, and made us hear the all-too familiar Shakespeare with fresh ears.

I was more puzzled by choices made in the shaping and presentation of the Merchant. I felt that in its focus on its Jewish theme, the performance overlooked or excised a number of related concerns that are part of the very fabric of Shakespeare's design. I thought the presentation of the Prince of Morocco, with its conventionally hammed racial stereotype, missed a key opportunity to open up the issue of Shylock's treatment to broader issues of prejudice, including Portia's own. What would happen if one offered a dignified Morocco, along the lines of the early Othello?

The opening song, with its comic repetition of "Amore Ah", led one to expect a sense of the ways in which love and bonds, law and bondage are inextricably intertwined in Shakespeare's text. But the love plot was severely cut, and the possibility of genuine love between the couples given the most cynical of interpretations. What an opportunity lost, with the powerful projection of "Mercy" and "Misericordia" and "Rachamim", to explore the ways in which these terms are cognates of love, and the ways in which Shakespeare asks us to feel and think deeply about the relationship between commercial contracts, racial and religious ties, and the bonds that join us all through love! And the possibility of renegotiating our ties and commitments.

Finally, I thought having five Shylocks worked superbly. They offered different, sometimes contrasting, perspectives on a Shakespearean figure who is too often considered in monolithic, "character" terms. They encouraged the actors to work with and within Shakespeare's language, allowing it to lead and shape them. And they gave us a glimpse of what I like to think of as Shakespeare's "distributed character": the ways in which the language he gives his characters is distributed or shared across different characters in the plays, thereby forestalling our all too easy tendency to reach for judgement rather than to engage with compassion and understanding. Having the actor playing Gratiano also embody one of the Shylocks forced us to rethink the simplistic racial, character and religious divisions we impose upon a play that in fact resists them.

This was a powerful, moving, almost overwhelming and strangely beautiful event. Unique. Unrepeatable. Utterly memorable. As theatre at its best should be.

Elena Pellone, who played the part of Nerissa, offers her own reflections:

On such a night…

The moon is shining over the Ghetto, and the cast have gathered soaking in the awe of the moment. The beauty of Venice, the emotion of coming together to do this historical production to commemorate the 500 years of the creation of the Ghetto in Venice and the 400 year anniversary of Shakespeare’s death. We are doing the Merchant of Venice in Venice. The first time ever it will be performed in the Ghetto. The walls speak to us. We embrace each other in the madness and the beauty of trying to mount this production in three weeks. It is sold out. We have come from all over the globe to do it. The director Karin Coonrod’s company is based in New York. Her Portia is Colin Powell’s daughter, adding profound resonance to the Mercy speech. Jessica is played by a beautiful young Jewess, her sensitivity, and youth giving our Jessica a mystical beauty, as she sits in the window of what has always been referred to as Shylock’s house in the Ghetto. In our play she carries the hope of a new future in her hands, standing apart at the end of the play, watching how not to be. We are from all over the Globe. Karin calls it a palcoscenico internationale - an international stage. The play will be mostly in English, but infused with all different languages. Venetian, Italian, Hebrew, French, German, Ladino, Arabic… We are a mongrel lot. Our Prince of Morocco lives in Milan, grew up in France, his mother was born in Morocco, his father in Tunisia…and so the stories go…My father is Neapolitan, my mother Greek-Egyptian, I was born in Australia, I live in Stratford-upon Avon and study at the Shakespeare Institute…and so our stories go…We have been blown here by the wind from all corners, and the heart and the vision of the director is to make this grand gesture, this moment in time where we move forward, recognising that we are all outsiders, all foreigners, all aliens, but ultimately all the same. Hurt by the same weapons and healed by the same means. As we rehearse in the Ghetto, the walls witness our shame as they ring with the words, “Dog Jew”, “Impenetrable Cur”…. The ending has been changed and Shylock has the last word. Well the five Shylocks, one for every scene. In our production, Shylock has become everyman - the slivers of ourselves, the persecution of the outsider, the rage that fuels us towards injustice. There is little love in this play full of money and commerce, where flesh is for sale, as well as the soul, and the future is a gamble – “We’ll play for the first born for a thousand ducats”. But at the end the last monologue rings out as a warning. “You ask me why I’d rather have the weight of carrion flesh than three thousand ducats? I’ll not answer that but say it is my humour? Are you answered?” The walls speak to us, projected on them the word Mercy in English, Italian and Hebrew. The bigger ideas of the play, larger than the characters and the moments. Our task is to mine all of the humanity contained in the play, that no character really shows. Love and Mercy. The commitment to each other, the coming together as a company, the generosity is what lives beyond the story, beyond the play and the moment. All of us together, under the moon, on such a night, heeding and giving the warning. Killing happens without cause, without accountability. Hatred, prejudice, conditional love. We all are guilty of judgment and fear. We all are creators of, and victims of, the system. We are all asked to really consider the words of the poet. The words of Poets. Love. Mercy. And the walls will literally speak to us.

For me it is the future of theatre – international, borderless theatre. And precisely what Shakespeare knew. We are in the Globe. We are the players on stage, together. And the power of theatre to hold a mirror up to us and see ourselves. He challenges that. How we see ourselves. Karin challenges that. We are all accountable to the vision. It is complex. It is heartbreaking. And it is beautiful. For there is hope. It is not about winning or losing. It is about mercy. Misericordia.

“That the powerful play goes on, and you will contribute a verse.” Walt Whitman.

Links to the project, photos and information: 

• Compagnia de' Colombari
• The Merchant in Venice performance website
• The Merchant in Venice on Facebook
• Universita Ca'Foscari Venezia

http://www.veniceghetto500.org/altri-eventi/il-mercante-di-venezia/?lang=en