[In the following review of Richard Olivier's 1998 production of The Merchant of Venice, Mahon comments on the director's “colorblind” casting, decision to make Portia the play's central figure, and efforts to recreate a historically authentic theater-going experience at the New Globe.]

The son of Laurence Olivier and Joan Plowright, Richard Olivier has worked in the theatre for some years, both in England and in the United States. He directed Henry V at Shakespeare's Globe last summer. He has published several books, including the memoir Shadow of the Stone Heart: A Search for Manhood. During a conversation with me in his London home on 15 June, Olivier reflected on his approach to directing Merchant at the New Globe on Bankside this summer. His remote preparation for the assignment began much earlier and included a trip last winter to the University of Lecce, in the Italian province of Puglia, where he conducted a workshop on the play for drama students. The Italian students provided insight into the energy of Italian character and expressed satisfaction with a dramatic action that moved from carnival toward the “Passion”/Easter of the courtroom scene. Students in Lecce readily perceived Shylock as a villain.

These responses reinforced Olivier's determination to present The Merchant of Venice in terms of what the play would have meant in the 1590s, to release the story in the way it was intended to be told, to serve as a storyteller rather than as an interpreter. Such goals complement the Globe's sacred “a-word,” authenticity. They also acknowledge the fact that the Globe space is an actors' space, so that the director's task is to empower the actors to do their jobs.

This space also provokes interaction: seeing the play makes viewers confront their own prejudices. The colorblind casting reflects the reality of Venice at the time: it was a multicultural society in which many servants were Armenians. The Globe of 1998 should reflect the cultural “mix” in England now just as the Globe of the 1590s did then.

Asked how his father might have influenced his concept of the play, Richard Olivier responded that Sir Laurence influenced him to the extent that he wanted to avoid a star like his father or Dustin Hoffman in the Shylock role—that immediately emphasizes the character. (In fact, the Globe's Shylock, the German actor Norbert Kentrup, had long been Sam Wanamaker's choice for the role.) Modern productions tend to “over-weight” the Shylock.

It is Portia's play, even in terms of number of scenes. More importantly, the play highlights her effort to change a masculine world, to move the society from an “either/or” stance to a “both/and” one. Most people seem to agree that feminine intuition like Portia's needs to be disguised in order to succeed in a male world. In general, Olivier observed, Shakespeare surely intended audiences to feel ambiguity about the motives of his characters.

Richard Olivier explained that Globe Education offers workshops for students that explore the anti-Semitism of the play, including the problem that the Christians never apologize for their behavior nor retract their treatment of Shylock. Workshops for business people focus on male/female role-playing and its impact on corporate leadership. Cranfield U's School of Management offered a two-day seminar last June at the Globe's Education Centre. Three Cranfield lecturers joined Richard Olivier to present the program, which cost each participant £1,025!

Addressing other aspects of the production, Olivier noted that, on the Globe stage, costumes become the set and music becomes the lighting; music denotes location—bells for Venice, lutes for Belmont. Operating on the assumption that everything behind the back wall is part of a magic space, Olivier deliberately positioned the three caskets in the discovery space, where they probably would have stood in the original production, not visible to some in the audience, now as then.

Finally, Richard Olivier acknowledged that the Globe space promotes the danger of overplaying to the groundlings and neglecting the audience seated in the galleries. Since the text of the play is performed virtually uncut (only about 5٪ of Merchant was cut), too much “business” unduly lengthens the performance time. The performance tends to evolve over the course of the summer; in the case of Henry V in 1997, ten minutes of “business” was shaved off over the course of the production.