Thursday, November 10, 2011

SHYLOCK


SHYLOCK
Guy Masterson at the Cramphorn Theatre
01.11.11

Jim Hutchon was in the Cramphorn ...


Guy Masterson has made a mission of producing and developing one-man plays for others which he launches on successful provincial tours throughout the UK and Europe.
On welcome occasions, he performs these himself, and this examination of Shakespeare's Jew is an example of his work at its finest and most revealing.
Unlike the current trend to 'rehabilitate' Shylock's temperament in sympathetic terms, Gareth Armstong's treatment is to neither blame nor acclaim, but instead, to reveal the rounded person and his history, warts and all.
Masterson is, above all, a master story teller and he had the audience in the palm of his hand from his first utterances.
They swayed forward as one in the quiet passages and rocked back in the furious ones.
And I doubt a single member of the full house left without a singularly modified picture of the Jew who tried but failed to redress the balance of his benighted race.

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