Word: portias
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...month run of The Merchant of Venice, giving the play the largest advance sale of any nonmusical show in West End history. For once the actual event is no disappointment, although in director Peter Hall's shrewd reading the play is more comedy than tragedy and focuses more on Portia (played by Geraldine James of TV's The Jewel in the Crown) than on Shylock...
...play's other actors try for less serious performances. Mike Gaw and Robert P. Chapski wryly exaggerate their cameos as Portia's unsuccessful suitors. Jeff Hobson is a nicely lecherous Lancelot Gobbo. Phil Fry squeezes the maximum comedic possibilities from his roles as servant Stephano and the blind Old Gobbo...
...various lovers in the play act like lovesick teenagers, comically defusing potentially tense moments. Portia (Alissa Reiner) and Nerissa (Beth Turner) giggle like schoolgirls at a slumber party while they make fun of Portia's suitors in words and gestures. Chris Duffy's Bassanio is always wide-eyed and bewildered, looking like a teen on a first date. While he declares his love to Portia, Nerissa and Gratiano (John C. Buten) make puppydog eyes at each other and blow kisses from opposite sides of the stage...
...large share of bravado, but he is also full of Shakespeare and good humor. One of the highlights of the show comes when McKellen challenges the audience to find a single happy marriage in Shakespeare's canon--and shoots down every suggestion--from Othello and Desdemona to Brutus and Portia--with a few witty retorts. "Romeo and Juliet?" McKellen muses, "Short and sweet...
This game show brings as out of the '20s and into the '70s. But wait--inside the silver casket is a picture of Ronald Reagan, and we are suddenly reminded of the '80s Rossman heaps anachronisms on top of anachronisms, from Portia's touch-once telephone to Jessica and Lorenzo's bout with marijuana, and the product gives the audience a queasy and disorienting trip through decades and centuries...