"If you prick us, do we not bleed?"

The Merchant of Venice is brilliant. And it was so fun to be able to go watch a live performance of it on Saturday! I admit that I was a bit speculative about it when I first found out that the play had been adapted for young audiences. I was afraid of it being cheesy or insincere. I was especially interested to see how they would adapt it because of a fun experience that I had just a couple nights before.

I was babysitting four super cute kids. It was their bedtime so I put them all in bed, sang them a few songs, and then went back downstairs to do homework. But just a few minutes later, the 4 and 6 year old girls came downstairs crying because they were scared without their parents. So I invited them to snuggle on the couch with me and asked them if they would like me to tell them a story. They immediately stopped crying, haha. The first thing that came to my mind was the Merchant of Venice, which I had just finished reading for my Shakespeare class. I mean, Shakespeare was meant for bedtime stories, right? So I started to tell them the story of Bassanio and Antonio and Portia and Shylock. I definitely edited out the part about Shylock being a Jew. And I portrayed him more as being the Big Bad-guy rather than being a sad product of his circumstances. And the focus of my story was definitely the love story between Bassanio and Portia and how Bassanio had to win her by choosing the right chest. The girls loved it :)

Ha, I'm not the only one telling Shakespeare as bedtime stories! This is cute. Bring on the Shakespeare Geek's adaptation. This convinces me that telling Shakespeare stories at bed time is definitely the way to go!

Anyway, it was interesting to me that the whole focus of the theater production of The Merchant of Venice was geared towards the fact that Shylock was different from Antonio and analyzing the lack of kindness that all the characters displayed towards those different from themselves. Their main focus wasn't love, it was the lack of it.

I thought the production was great. It did a great job of making the play personal to the kids in the audience by focusing on bullying, which is something they deal with in their own lives, and also by having the kids participate right in the play. It was so great!

My favorite, favorite part was the cute little girl they got to play Jessica. Specifically, when they announced that she fell in love and married Lorenzo, who was played by a cute little boy, and the look of disgust that she gave him. It was HILARIOUS!

Great production. I loved that they didn't change the Shakespeare language even though their main audience was children. They did a great job of not only entertaining the audience but teaching a pertinent message very effectively.

So if I get the chance to retell the Merchant of Venice as a bedtime story, perhaps I'll bring it a little closer to home and run a bullying thread through it :)