How to stage Shakespeare on air and bring the text to life without the benefit of set, costumes, choreography and all the physical business of a theatrical performance? That’s the question faced by drama directors on radio, and Emma Harding in particular whose adaptation of The Merchant of Venice was broadcast last Sunday on Radio 3. Updated to 2008, just as the financial crash was beginning to impact on individual lives, the play opens with the pulsating beat of a track from the contemporary charts (music and the odd bit of additional dialogue being the only way to indicate setting). For yes, shock horror, in this version of the play Antonio and his merchant banker friends order lattes in a noisy coffee bar. The barista who serves them addresses them by name to help us know who’s who. ‘Shakespeare doesn’t name-check enough for radio,’ says Harding. And we begin not with Antonio saying ‘I know not why I am so sad’ but with his curses on Shylock, the ‘cut-throat dog’.
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