Had a lovely day. The weather has suddenly taken a turn for the better and humans are smiling again. After a very busy day sorting out the Mikado Programme, taking the guinea pigs to the vet for their shots, taking Jas to the shops and buying stuff for out picnic, we went to Brownsea to see BOAT's Merchant of Venice.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and equally hated it. The last time I saw this play was a school outing to Stratford. I can honestly say I don't recall it being so racist. Now I am the last person to be PC - in fact, I probably go out of my way to be non PC, but there was something deeply offensive about the whole play. The idea of enforcing a religion on another, was one that needed very subtle handling and I didn't feel that this was achieved. The audience gave out an audible groan on that line and it seemed to me the cast themselves squirmed.

The director certainly relied too heavily on the individual performers own interpretation of their roles - there was no cohesion in the production, which resulted in the audience themselves trying to decide where their sympathies should lie. An admirable decision, but one that probably did not have the desired result.

Shylock was certainly played for sympathy, but he could have taken it much further. The wonderful "do we not bleed" speech was somewhat thrown away - it could have the audience in tears and probably should have. But it was Shylock's hatred of Antonio that needed work. The opening scenes helped, with Shylock spat on (I can't remember if it was Antonio, but I assume it must have been) and clearly reviled. But Shylock's crescendo of hatred, spiralling out of control and his finally wanting to kill Antonio, just did not happen.

But this production's problem must surely have been the lacklustre performance of the title role of Antonio. Interestingly played as a foolish father figure, the friendship (I seem to have swallowed an alliteration pill) with Bassanio (which could have been resoundingly and electrically homosexual) just didn't seem true. And it needed it. Antonio's initial sadness and possible unrequited love, was never explained or resolved - if not for Bassanio, then for whom?

All the other roles were well performed, with no one really standing out apart from Chaz Davenport as Solanio, who has the undoubted gift of making the archaic language entirely natural and understood by the audience. Julian Brown's Bassanio had the stunning profile of the beautiful perfect Renaissance man, which would have surely had Raphael and Michelangelo following him down the street. He really would have been very good as a man torn between his sexuality and would have made some sense of the lead casket's warning that marriage to Portia would mean renouncing everything! But all the characters are thoroughly unpleasant, from Bassanio's mercenary approach to marriage, Antonio's horrific cruelty, Shylock's hatred of Christians, to Portia's unneccessary trick on her future husband and vile justice for Shylock. The final scene leaves us realising that these 3 marriages are doomed to failure.

Oh well. The play's the thing. And the play, if taken from last night's performance with the audience as a whole hating the hero, is not so much anti Semitic as anti Christian.