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Just another day in Venice as old money and new money meet head-on.
Shylock, big fish in the Jewish banking community, has made his money the old fashioned way: a slow, back-breaking climb up the corporate ladder. Antonio, goy-wonder of the Venetian financial world, has made his fortune by playing fast and loose with the markets and some white-knuckle investments. The fact is: they don't like each other. But now Antonio's about to make the highest risk investment of his life.
Antonio's buddy Bassanio, perpetually down-and-out, wants to travel to near-by Belmont and try his luck at a game of ...Read More
Just another day in Venice as old money and new money meet head-on.
Shylock, big fish in the Jewish banking community, has made his money the old fashioned way: a slow, back-breaking climb up the corporate ladder. Antonio, goy-wonder of the Venetian financial world, has made his fortune by playing fast and loose with the markets and some white-knuckle investments. The fact is: they don't like each other. But now Antonio's about to make the highest risk investment of his life.
Antonio's buddy Bassanio, perpetually down-and-out, wants to travel to near-by Belmont and try his luck at a game of chance in order to win the hand of the wealthy and beautiful Portia. It seems that Portia's late father devised a particularly strange variant of three-card monte that must be won by any suitor who wishes to wed the "little lady."
To bankroll this gambling excursion Signore Bassanio turns to Shylock for a loan and Antonio steps in to guarantee it with a pound of his own flesh as the price of default. When Antonio's three ships fail to come in and his bank account tanks he finds himself (or at least a pound of himself) beholden to Shylock.
As you'd imagine the whole thing heads to court in a major showdown between justice and mercy. But in this world rife with corruption, how can an equally skewed judge make a decision? How can one measure a yard when the yardstick is bent?
Director G. J. Cederquist, Strawdog Artistic Director Nic Dimond and Artistic Associate Mike Dailey have sliced a pound of their own out of Shakespeare's most controversial play and left it as lean and mean as a day-trader on a caffeine binge.
It's another hard-boiled assault on Shakespeare from the crew at Strawdog.
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