Boika Sokolova and Kirilka Stavreva’s second edition of the stage history of
The Merchant of Venice interweaves into the chronology of James Bulman’s first edition richly contextualised chapters on Max Reinhardt, Peter Zadek, and the first production of the play in Mandatory Palestine, directed by Leopold Jessner. While the focus of the book is on post-1990s productions across Europe and the USA, and on film, the Segue provides a broad survey of the interpretative shifts in the play’s performance from the 1930s to the second decade of the twenty-first century. Individual chapters explore productions by Peter Zadek, Trevor Nunn, Robert Sturua, Edward Hall, Rupert Goold, Daniel Sullivan, and Karin Coonrod. An extensive film section including silent film offers close analysis of Don Selwyn’s
Te Tangata Whai Rawa o Weniti and Michael Radford’s adaptation
. Accessible and engaging, the book will interest students, academics, and general readers.
Table of Content
PART I
I An Elizabethan Merchant: performance and context
II Henry Irving and the great tradition
III Wayward genius in the high temple of bardolotry: Theodore Komisarjevsky
IV Aesthetes in a rugger club: Jonathan Miller and Laurence Olivier
V The BBC Merchant: diminishing returns
VI Cultural stereotyping and audience response: Bill Alexander and Antony Sher
VII Shylock and the pressures of history
PART II
Segue The Merchant of Venice: pressures of war, ideology, and the crises of late capitalism
I Magical spectacles and nightmarish times: Max Reinhardt’s productions of The Merchant of Venice
II Peter Zadek’s challenges to the post-war German legacy of The Merchant of Venice
III A post-Holocaust balancing act: The Merchant of Venice directed by Trevor Nunn at the National Theatre, London (1999)
IV Desperate outsiders in a money-drunk world: The Merchant of Venice directed by Daniel Sullivan (2010) and Rupert Goold (2011)
V Crises of the new millennium: The Merchant of Venice directed by Robert Sturua (2000) and Edward Hall (2009)
VI The Merchant of Venice on film
VII The search for justice: The Merchant of Venice in Mandatory Palestine (1936) and the Venetian Ghetto (2016)
Appendix A Some significant twentieth- and twenty-first century productions of The Merchant of Venice
Appendix B Major actors and creative staff for productions discussed
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Boika Sokolova is Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Notre Dame (USA) in England Kirilka Stavreva is Professor of English at Cornell College, USA
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