The Merchant of Venice
Part of the 2009 Spring Season
May 6—9, 12—16 at 7:30pm
May 10 & 17 at 3pm
By William Shakespeare
Watermill Theatre (UK) and Propeller production
Directed by Edward Hall
“The daring, the dazzle and the pure craft of this company... absolutely exhilarating.”
—The New York Times
William Shakespeare would delight in the compelling, audaciously cheeky theater of Edward Hall and his award-winning company Propeller. Their adherence to a men-only policy onstage—a fact of the Bard’s day—along with Hall's mischievous, highly physical approach, sends up Shakespeare’s intricate tanglings between the sexes. Last at BAM with The Taming of the Shrew and Twelfth Night (2007 Spring Season), comedies that revel in the trials and inevitable tribulations of romantic love, Propeller returns with a new staging of The Merchant of Venice, a work that poses still-incendiary questions about truth, morality, and prejudice.
The story revolves around Shylock, a Jewish moneylender caught between his faith’s strictures and the demands of Christianity. There's little to laugh at, to be sure. Yet in this astute production, Hall and company pull off a miracle, revealing Merchant's underlying absurdities—the virtue in vice and vice in virtue—while delivering an unsparing rendition of the harrowing bargain at its core.
BAM Harvey Theater
Running time: 180min with intermission
Subscription tickets: $20, 36, 52
(Full price: $25, 45, 65)
Set design by Michael Pavelka
Lighting design by Ben Ormerod
Interview with director Edaward Hall
"Talented, award-nominated director Edward Hall is the second generation in one of British theatre's powerhouse families." More
The Guardian (UK) Reviews The Merchant of Venice
"Edward Hall's superb, all-male company Propeller proves again the value of a true ensemble and a director who treats Shakespeare's plays as if they'd just been written." More
Propeller
The official homepage of Britain's fierce, all-male Shakespeare troupe. More
Full-Text of The Merchant of Venice
Stage the play at home for family, pets, and friends. More
On Gender and Casting in Elizabethan Shakespeare
The historical context for all-male Shakespeare. More