A Pound of Flesh
★★★☆☆ Unjustified
theSpace on the Mile (Venue 29): Fri 1 – Sat 23 Aug 2025
Review by Rebecca Mahar
Arbery Theatre brings A Pound of Flesh, a reimagining of a Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, to theSpace on the Mile for a full run of the Fringe in a production that asks: What if Portia never came to Venice?
The Merchant of Venice hinges its resolution on Portia’s coming to Venice, making this an intriguing question to ask. But far from simply imagining an alternate ending in which Shylock might get his bond, A Pound of Flesh seeks to reframe the entire story to centre on the relationship between its titular merchant, Antonio, and his dear friend Bassanio.
This is an interesting choice, full of promise, but loses something in its pursuit: in “reimagining” this already tragic play as a tragedy, playwright Martin Foreman has tragically lost sight of what makes the original story work, robbing his adaptation of its potential.
Gabriel Bird as Antonio, Ollie Hiemann as Bassanio and Danielle Farrow as Shylock in A Pound of Flesh. Pic: Martin Foreman.
For those unfamiliar with the original, The Merchant of Venice is one of Shakespeare’s most complex plays. In Venice, Antonio is asked for money by Bassanio, to whom he has already given much. With his liquid assets tied up in shipping, Antonio borrows three thousand ducats from the Jewish moneylender Shylock, whom he treats with contempt and insult for both his religion and profession (the prejudice towards Jews being shared by all the play’s other Christian characters). Shylock agrees, taking as collateral a promised bond of a pound of flesh from Antonio’s body.
Bassanio travels to Belmont to meet with the rich heiress Portia, whom he intends to marry to solve his financial difficulties. She is bound by her father’s edit that she may only wed the man who chooses correctly from three caskets: gold, silver, and lead, which has her portrait inside.
Meanwhile, Shylock’s daughter Jessica is in love with the Christian man Lorenzo and runs away with him, agreeing to convert, and leaving her widowed father alone. Unbeknownst to everyone, Antonio’s ships have been lost, leaving him unable to repay Shylock, who will now demand his bond.
There’s a lot going on— this summary doesn’t even mention the various supporting characters such as Portia’s lady-in-waiting Nerissa, Shylock’s servant Launcelot Gobbo, and Bassanio’s friend Gratiano, who all have important roles to play.
Ultimately all story’s various threads weave together back in Venice, at the trial where Shylock is awarded his pound of flesh, according to the law. After which Portia, disguised as a lawyer, tricks him out of it and with the collaboration of the Duke of Venice and Antonio forces him to give up half his wealth and property to the state, to will the other half to Lorenzo, and to convert to Christianity, to save his own life.
context
Arbery’s A Pound of Flesh has dispensed with much of this, but the context is necessary to understand how writer/director Martin Foreman’s choices have affected the final product of the show.
A Pound of Flesh focuses on the relationship between Antonio and Bassanio, which can easily be read as queer in the original text. Some interpretations choose to ignore this entirely, some imply it, and some hint at it throughout before revealing it openly near the end.
A Pound of Flesh establishes it immediately, with Gabriel Bird giving a beautifully layered performance as Antonio. Clearly deeply in love with the younger Bassanio, he shows his outward devotion through his monetary support and willingness to go into debt to Shylock on Bassanio’s behalf.
Ruby Rutherston as Portia and Ollie Hiemann as Bassanio in A Pound of Flesh. Pic: Martin Foreman.
Ollie Hiemann’s Bassanio is energetic and eager, physically affectionate with Antonio, but either not aware, not willing or able to show, or simply not reciprocating the level of attraction the merchant holds for him. All this is established in their first interaction, a feather in the cap of two actors who have clearly put in the work to develop this relationship.
The performances throughout the company are excellent. Danielle Farrow’s Shylock is wry, sharp, and unforgiving, a commanding physical presence that remains solid and unwavering in the face of Bird’s much larger Antonio.
Farrow’s command of the text is thorough. She deserves an outing in a full production of The Merchant of Venice that would allow a much deeper exploration of her version of Shylock, and what it means for the character to be a woman.
Ruby Rutherson as Portia likewise makes the most of what text is left to her, and the additions Foreman has made. Her Portia is convincingly in love with Bassanio, and her anxiety during the casket-choosing scene lends an edge to a scene that is obviously going to go the right way. In one of the new scenes in which Portia is stricken by the plague on her way to Venice, Foreman is heartbreaking.
Michael Robert-Brown, meanwhile, flits in and out as every supporting character, from the Doge of Venice to all of Portia’s servants in one, providing a necessary glue to the piece.
fundamental problems
The five actors who make up the company of A Pound of Flesh cannot be faulted for their performances: each has thoroughly committed to their roles and to each other. They have thoroughly earned this review’s stars, and more. The play’s fundamental problems lie in its text.
The decision to focus on Antonio and Bassanio is interesting, a compelling look into this often under-explored relationship. However, their story does not function without Shylock, and Shylock’s arc in the play makes no sense without the context of Jessica, who here is only mentioned in passing. Her seeming betrayal is the catalyst that pushes Shylock past his breaking point amid the daily bigotry and mistreatment he faces.
Despite Farrow’s best efforts, the Shylock of A Pound of Flesh has no real arc, and is simply a vindictive background character, set from the beginning on Antonio’s death; there is no justification for the situation to escalate as it does.
The play’s headline question, What if Portia never came to Venice?, also corrupts the storytelling. While Shylock does head into the trial intended to demand his bond according to the law, it is Portia in the guise of Balthazar who pushes him into his ultimate ruthlessness and readiness to take up the knife. Without all the context that has been swept aside, A Pound of Flesh presents a thoroughly unmotivated trial scene in order to get Antonio into the cell where Bassanio comes to see him in his final hours.
Ruby Rutherston as Portia and Ollie Hiemann as Bassanio, with Michael-Robert Brown, Gabriel Bird and Danielle Farrow as servants in A Pound of Flesh. Pic: Martin Foreman.
As for why Portia never comes to Venice, Foreman has resorted to Shakespeare’s own classic tactics: killing his principal female characters offstage to serve the story of men. Portia is the only female character Foreman seems to have felt important enough to leave in A Pound of Flesh; and though, as mentioned, Farrow’s female Shylock is a compelling one, Foreman has not addressed this change of gender in the text other than to add gendered insults such as “inexecrable bitch,” not content with the “dog” of Shakespeare.
The whole production smacks of misogyny— not because of its decision to focus on male characters, but because of how it has chosen to treat its female characters along the way.
missteps
Deleted, rolled up into other characters, killed off, faced with additional needless hatred; the question A Pound of Flesh appears to be asking is “What if female characters just didn’t matter?” These missteps do the opposite of supporting Foreman’s intended exploration of Antonio and Bassanio, to say nothing of the playwright’s stated dismissal of the importance of Shylock’s Jewishness and Antonio’s (and everyone else’s) Christianity.
According to the Arbery Theatre website, this fifty-minute production is an “abbreviated version of a yet to be produced 75+ minute play with the same number of scenes and actors,” and that a 90-100 minute version with “a larger cast and characters such as Jessica and Gratiano” will be available by the end of the year.
Perhaps, in one of these versions, Antonio and Bassanio’s story will get the justification it deserves.
Running time: 50 minutes (no interval).
theSpace on the Mile (Space 2), 80 High Street EH1 1TH (Venue 39).
Friday 1 – Saturday 23 August 2025.
Daily (Not Suns 10, 17): 8.25pm.
Tickets and details: Book here on EdFringe.com.
Arbery Theatre website: www.arberytheatre.uk
Facebook: @ArberyTheatre
Instagram: @ArberyTheatre
TikTok: @arberytheatre
X: @arberytheatre
ENDS
