Merchant of Venice, Royal Shakespeare Theatre ***

I had a choice between seeing Polly Findlay's Merchant starring Patsy Ferran or Trevor Nunn's Volpone with Henry Goodman. In the end, I chose youth over experience and chose Merchant. A few weeks later, the reviews came out for the production and it felt like I had made the wrong decision. Apart from one five star review from a reviewer whose views I disagree with on a regular basis, the bulk of the reviews were negative to say the least. The few people I spoke to in the weeks leading up to my trip weren't very complimentary of it either. Therefore, I went into the performance with lower than low expectations.

Therefore, it felt great to come out and say that it is OK. It is far from perfect. The pendulum was distracting with no real purpose; the brass set, whilst meaningful, felt like a wrong move; and the use of a Brechtian style of theatre had no real purpose and made it feel more like a student production than an RSC one. However, I can watch Patsy Ferran act all day without getting bored and the company, who are in rep, are just as fantastic in this as they were in Othello. It feels fantastic to see a production that focuses on Portia  rather than just on the anti- semitism and Shylock. The route Findlay has chosen for then relationship between Antonio and Bassanio, whilst an odd one, is justifiable and makes the final scenes bubble and come alive. Khoury is perfectly fine as Shylock,even if his story is brought back and Tim Samuels makes a decent stab at injecting some fun and dry humour into Lancelot Gobbo. The production as a whole is quite eerie and feels quite experimental so that, whilst it does have flaws, I came out not regretting my decision to see this daring and odd take on Shakespeare's troublesome play.