Rupert Goold reteams with Patrick Stewart for THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, featuring Howard Charles and Dan Percival, with sound designed by Gregory Clarke. Now playing through 4 October 2011 at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Stratford-Upon-Avon.
Guardian (4*):
This is a dazzling production that gathers strength as it goes along. It may seem a gimmick to have Launcelot Gobbo played … as an Elvis impersonator, but it yields a handsome return when Portia’s climactic breakdown is accompanied by the strains of Are You Lonesome Tonight … [The] whole point of this daring and innovative production is that Shakespeare’s play itself takes us into an imaginary dreamscape in which reality eventually intrudes … Las Vegas seems a perfect metaphor for a world of financial and romantic fantasy.
