Merchant of Venice Tickets

Merchant of Venice was great and am glad I bought tickets for it.

Very well acted and the production was well done combining an old theme with new setting. A very good night.

A great production with a great cast was marred by a very poor sound system. Do not sit in the first balcony or above. You can barely hear anything. But the peformances and updated production design are well worth the effort.

Our seats were towards the back of the main floor, under the balcony overhang. We heard about 1/3 of the dialogue - everyone around us was straining to catch a word or two. The actors, except for Abraham, seemed adolescent and shrill - very amateurish acting. The sets and ideas for the production were amazing. Through it all, we got to observe the "sound" guy just over from us, texting, texting, texting,

The entire cast was wonderful especially, Portia and Shylock. It suffered from being in such a large theatre. It took a while to adjust to the distance of the sound even on the main floor in Row R. In New York, the theaters are smaller and so I am sure it was not a problem there. It seemed to get better as the actors sensed the need to project more. Really interesting design and staging by putting it in modern times.

With a somewhat reluctant 17 year old son in tow, we were drawn to this production on the strength of F. Murray Abraham's reputation. My son instantly related to the modern setting, incidental music, techno interface. Though we were drawn by the 'star' Mr. Abraham, this was really a complete ensemble effort, which made this very understandable for us, though we'd never seen nor read MoV previously. Highly recommended, so glad they came to Chicago!

Oh, my word! Not even as fine an actor as F Murray Abraham could save this disaster! Nothing worked! Portia screeched - though one could still hear her mispronunciations; Bassasnio was a twit to whom I can't imagine any woman turning over her fortune. The blatant racism of portraying Gobbo as an African-American gangsta offended anyone with sense, and sorry! but the idiocy of using the Stock Exchange in place of the Rialto beggars explanation. It will take decades to get the taste of this atrocity out of my mouth - the horror! the horror!

the play was very much about barriers.... solid F Murray Abraham brought the only real gravitas. I thought the superficial aspects were highlighted in excess , but a real sense of conflict & humiliation did exist. I wish more passion would have substituted for the clashing of wits. But it is a unique twist on Shakespeare, showing young people as callous knuckleheads & a moral lesson standing firm. For die-hard fans, only!!!

The opportunity to see F. Murray Abraham exercise his acting chops was enough reason for me to go see this production of Merchant of Venice.