The Merchant of Venice with Silvio Orlando at the Bellini Theater

The Merchant of Venice according to Valerio Binasco at the Bellini Theater in Naples. With Silvio Orlando and the Popular Shakespeare Kompany

From 11 to 16 November 2014 will be held at Bellini Theater of Naples lo spettacolo The merchant of Venice, a tribute to the famous William Shakespeare. To stage one of the most famous plays of the "Bard" will be the Popular Shakespeare Kompany, which undertakes every year to stage a classic, with the intention of continuing to offer the public great texts, with new production methods, that transform the crisis in the occasion of renewal and creativity.

To interpret the petty protagonist Shylock will be Silvio Orlando, while to sign the direction is Valerio Binasco, which offers us a staging that investigates deeply in the categories of 'good' and 'bad' to the point of mixing them up: then the clash between a multitude of equals - Antonio's Christians - and the different individual - the Jew Shylock becomes fundamental.

In the Merchant, everything revolves around a group of friends. The heroes of this story are not heroes. They stand in the second and third row in life. But they have some concerns. A push that leads them to the risky gesture. However, the fact that they are always shared adventures with friends makes them a bit peasant heroes, creators of anecdotes rather than legends. The text therefore appears as “a dark counter-fable”, a story that looks like a fable, but which only makes adults smile, because they have lost all hope. […] We must not give in to this temptation. On the contrary: we must make a great fable of the merchant, and a theater party. That is, of hope

Valerio Binasco