It’s nine years since this politically problematic play was seen at Shakespeare’s Globe, and Rebecca Gatward’s new production has been a troubled endeavour. First her Portia, Michelle Duncan, pulled out for personal reasons; and on opening night Mark Rice-Oxley, as Gratiano, was laid low by a gastric virus. Postinterval he was replaced by the valiant Craig Gazey, script in hand, who had already spent the first half of the evening playing Launcelot Gobbo with an injured ankle.

Mishaps aside, the particular demands and strengths of the space present an opportunity for a bold re-examination of the play. Would Gatward seize upon the way in which the venue embraces the broad, and present a staging that highlighted the work’s comedic aspects, perhaps to cruel and uncomfortable effect?

That may have been her intention; if so, she has not been brave enough. There are some nicely judged performances here, and the odd occasion when the groundlings are made disconcertingly complicit in the drama’s antiSemitism. But the pace is pedestrian, and the comedy rarely cuts loose from predictability. Despite a Renaissance setting featuring strikingly creepy commedia dell’arte masks, there’s scant sense either of the ruthlessness of commerce or of the wildness of the carnivalesque. The play’s savagery is tamed, its laughter restrained.

The youth of Venice display their lust for life in much rowdy springing about, and Philip Cumbus as Bassanio, with his big blond hair and brothel-creeper shoes, is a playboy about town. Full of self-conscious charm, he flirts outrageously with Dale Rapley’s rather stolid Antonio, and rewards the promise of a loan with a calculated kiss. Once smitten with Kirsty Besterman’s sparky Portia, though, he is transfigured, changed by love for a clever woman from boy to man. Besterman, too, offers an interesting interpretation, watching in disdain as buffoonish suitors parade before her disapproving alabaster face and dismissing the Prince of Morocco with a nasty shard of racism.

But there are many disappointments here, notably John McEnery’s underpowered and oddly colourless Shylock. There’s something vague and half-hearted about his performance; he adopts a Faginesque accent and an unsympathetic, hard-eyed manner, but he is neither comic villain nor convincingly complex human victim. His great speech “Hath not a Jew eyes” is a monotonous rant; he spits back at the gentiles who vilify him, but when, at the trial’s conclusion, he is ruined and humiliated, his agony is frustratingly understated.

It’s a revealing touch on Gatward’s part that Antonio, raising Shylock from his knees and demanding that he be converted to Christianity, acts out of paternalism rather than malice. And the production briefly shows its teeth when the actors encourage the audience to participate in mocking Shylock with the chant “my ducats and my daughter”. But lack of vigour and conviction makes the whole slow going.

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