The Merchant of Venice — Bell Shakespeare

Overview

Bell Shakespeare is rounding out the year with a play about the varied benefits of displaying personal responsibility, i.e. one which will undoubtedly cause both boomers and millennials to assure the other group that it was written with them in mind (before they both Google it and discover it predates them by 400 odd years).

Bassanio is desperate to have a crack at wooing Portia, but to do so he needs 3000 ducats. He's broke, but his friend Antonio, a merchant, has always come up with the goods before. He does so again, but this time the money comes from Shylock, a moneylender happy to take anatomical reparations. Somehow we end up in a courtroom arguing semantics with Portia who is dressed up as a man.

With Mitch Butel as Shylock and Jess Tovey as Portia, The Merchant of Venice is the rollicking birth of the courtroom drama and definitely worth a squiz.