Faites vos jeux

A short while ago Rupert Goold transplanted Prospero’s isle to an Arctic ice floe.

A short while ago Rupert Goold transplanted Prospero’s isle to an Arctic ice floe. His latest hazard as theatrical travel agent is to whisk Antonio and Shylock off to Las Vegas. The hurly-burly of a modern casino turns out to be a buzzy metaphor for the high stakes for which everyone’s playing in The Merchant of Venice. There actually is a super-casino in Venice — bizarrely located in the very palazzo on the Grand Canal where Wagner died — but it’s much more fun for Goold to relocate to the US. This also allows Portia to star as hostess of a television game show called Destiny in which she herself is the delectably cute Barbie-doll prize (a superlative Stratford debut for Susannah Fielding, as no less for Emily Plumtree’s Nerissa).

Overlooking the odd reference to the Rialto, it’s amazing how well this works with Shakespeare’s text. You can only applaud the transformation of the clown Lancelot Gobbo into an Elvis impersonator (the splendid Jamie Beamish) who becomes a major player in this high-energy show, as does Howard Charles’s irresistible Gratiano. On the downside you have to get along with some shaky accents, and may groan for Antonio in yet another Guantanamo jumpsuit at his trial, but the touch of Goold and his excellent designer Tom Scutt is sufficiently tongue-in-cheek to pull off an Americanisation of The Merchant that yields at least one unexpectedly rich reward.

This is done by drawing out the ‘be careful what you wish for’ message ingrained in the play. Goold knows exactly when to calm the high-jinks and focus on the unhappy people that lie beneath the razzmatazz. Once the game show is ‘off air’ and Portia’s kicked off her Lady Peep slings, she’s struggling to relate to the boringly nondescript Bassanio she finds she’s won.