Pop-up Globe, The Entertainment Quarter, Sydney
September 12, 2018

Following successful runs in Auckland and Melbourne, the Pop-up Globe is now charming Sydney audiences with lively, immersive theatre experiences seeking to recreate the excitement and immediacy of Shakespeare’s second Globe, with productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Macbeth and The Comedy of Errors opening last week. Friday night’s scheduled opening of The Merchant of Venice, however, fell prey to a storm – torrential rain, hail and a string of severe weather warnings from the Bureau of Meteorology testing the Pop-up Globe’s status as an “all-weather venue”.

The Merchant of Venice at the Pop-up Globe. Photo: supplied 

As in the Pop-up Globe’s other productions, The Merchant of Venice offers plenty of spirited audience interaction – though the groundlings are (mostly) safe from being spattered by fluids from the stage – but this is a comedy with an edge, as Anne-Louise Sarks’ production for Bell Shakespeare highlighted so keenly last year.

New Zealand Director David Lawrence finds a nice balance between comedy and drama (this is not the all-out panto-fest of Pop-up Globe’s Comedy of Errors), aided but some memorable performances...