Pergola at the Merchant of Venice with Silvio Orlando

After the success of Romeo and Juliet, production Teatro Eliseo 2011, Riccardo Scamarcio and Deniz Ozdogan, was born a new company, the Popular Shakespeare Kompany, which had its official baptism with the play "The Tempest", within the Shakespeare Festival in Verona 2012.

The company is committed each year to stage a classic, with the intent to continue to offer the public great texts, with new production methods, that turn the crisis into opportunity for renewal and creativity.

Since last season, along with Silvio Orlando, the company toured Italy with "The Merchant of Venice", one of the best known works of Shakespeare.

We are in Venice, is the sixteenth century, Bassanio, young Venetian gentleman, would like the hand of Portia, heiress of Belmonte. To woo her worthily asks his close friend Antonio, The Merchant of Venice, three thousand ducats borrowed. Antonio can not lend him the money because he invested in maritime trade. Will provide for him from Shylock / Silvio Orlando, usurer jew, that does not bear the same Antonio, since it lends money free, by lowering the interest rate in the city. Despite this, Shylock grants the loan to Bassanio. The jew though, in the event of non-payment, wants a pound of flesh from Antonio; request that in the end will turn against.

In the staging of Valerio Binasco, though, we investigate deeply into the categories of 'good' and 'bad' to shuffle: evil is, but is the money itself.

"In Merchant everything revolves around a group of friends - the director explains Binasco - the heroes of this story are not the heroes. Are in second and third row in life. But they have anxieties. A push that brings them to risky gesture. However, the fact that they are always adventures shared with friends makes them heroes a little 'villagers, creators of anecdotes rather than legends. The text thus appears as "against a dark-fable", a story that sounds like a fairy tale, but that just makes you smile adults, because they have lost all hope. We must not give in to this temptation - continues the director - indeed: we must do a great tale of the merchant, and a celebration of the theater. That is the hope. ".

As to the question of anti-Semitism, classical accusation that move comes at work, con Auden, Binasco reiterates: "It 'The Merchant of Venice' religious differences are dashed so fatuous: not a problem of faith, but conformism. The essential, about Shylock, is not that a heretic or a jew, but that is an outsider ".

The work at the end is a comedy. However you try to read a certain grim discomfort: "The terrible, humiliating, miserable defeat of Shylock - continues Binasco - right or not right it, makes me uncomfortable. Announcement from now I'll be on his side. The rest, good and bad move constantly during the play. Depends on the circumstances. This is a modern and unassailable truth. The truth of a story that reveals that there is no truth. Yet life can be the same party. Even if the day is hard to appear. And it is night or day. It's time for wacky theater, when there is a paper moon, and the wind caressing the leaves without making any noise. Nothing hurts us. Even life. There is nothing more mild, the world, of our being here. Together. Equal ".

With Silvio Orlando find on stage actors who participated in the royal Shakespearean Binasco, as Andrea Di Casa, Fabrizio Contri, Milvia Marigliano, Nicola Panels. And then: Fulvio Simone July, Pepe, Barbara Ronchi, Roberto Turchetta, John Zerbinati. Elena Gigliotti will be in the role of Portia, Sergio Romano in the Lancelot, Casa di Andrea di Bassanio, while Nerissa is played by Milvia Marigliano, Anthony Nicholas Panels.

Michael Lattanzi

By the number 44 – The Year of 17/12/2014

 

Silvio Orlando
THE MERCHANT OF VENICE
by William Shakespeare
Popular with Shakespeare Kompany

(Cast in O.A.) Andrea Di Casa, Fabrizio Contri, Milvia Marigliano, Simone July, Elena Gigliotti, Elizabeth Mandalari, Nicola Panels, Fulvio Pepe, Sergio Romano, Roberto Turchetta, John Zerbinati
scenes Charles de Marino
costumes Sandra Cardini
lights Pasquale Mari
original music by Arturo Annecchino
assistant director Nicoletta Robello
directed by Valerio Binasco

TICKETS:
Whole:
Street € 32,00 Place stage € 24,00 Gallery € 16,00
Reduced (except Sunday)
OVER 60
Street € 28,00 Place stage € 20,00 Gallery € 14,00
UNDER 26
Street € 20,00 Place stage € 16,00 Gallery € 12,00
MEMBERS UNICOOP FLORENCE (Tuesday and Wednesday)
Street € 25,00 Place stage € 18,00 Gallery € 13,00