The popular opinion when it comes to presenting all things Shakespeare to contemporary (read: young) audiences seems to be to remove any sense of the "classic"—that pesky old iambic pentameter, extravagantly traditional period dress, stuffy speechifying—and telegraph it all with visual flash and slick pacing. The last movie decade has produced several effectively re-imagined screen adaptations of Shakespearean works; from Baz Luhrman’s hyperactive experiment Romeo and Juliet to Michael Almeryda’s gritty corporate Manhattan Hamlet. Included also are the so-so teen hijinks of Ten Things I Hate About You (The Taming of the Shrew on another planet, or at least another life).

But now comes Michael Radford’s romantic, dramatic new adaptation of Shakespeare’s controversial The Merchant of Venice, reminding us just how absorbing Shakespeare’s works can be when expertly performed in a traditional milieu with an excellent cast. Buoyed by a heavyweight ensemble including Al Pacino as put-upon, Jewish Shylock, Jeremy Irons as his debtor Antonio, Joseph Fiennes as lovesick Bassanio and arguably the finest turn, by Juilliard-trained newcomer Lynn Collins as lady-in-waiting Portia, The Merchant of Venice is a satisfyingly rich experience. Funny, romantic and tragic in equal doses. Not that Merchant could ever be performed in a contemporary setting today, given its tale of 16^th Century Venice, segregated Jews and pound of flesh revenge, lending it the reputation of Shakespeare’s most suspect play. I recently caught up with director Michael Radford and actress Lynn Collins to chat about their experience together.

LS: Michael, I’ve read conflicting information on The Merchant of Venice—that it is the most performed of Shakespeare’s works, and also that it’s the least performed because of its subject.

MR: It’s actually the most produced up until the 20^th century. With the rise of Nazis and things like that, people started to become a little afraid of it because they conceive of it as an anti-Semitic play.

LS: But it’s actually not an anti-Semitic play, it’s a play about the subject of anti-Semitism, which is a critical distinction.

MR: Yes, it really is. But it’s not just about anti-Semitism, or at least my film isn’t. Hopefully it’s about racial prejudice in general, and not just that.

LS: I believe you wanted no ‘declaiming’ in the film; that you were uncomfortable with Shakespeare, which I interpreted as a desire to move away from the way that Shakespeare is normally delivered.

MR: I’ve always felt that Shakespeare gets treated as a ‘dead’ text—you either recite it or you feel obliged to jazz it up. I didn’t feel either of those. I felt that people used to go to these theaters and fill them up, and they were ignorant people. They went because the plays were exciting to them. I just wanted to make it exciting for a movie audience, really. So I’d get people to speak in an ordinary kind of way and make them think that they were just living in this world.

LS: The film does a good job of making this world very sensual and inviting; it’s very ripe and exotic. But it also can be quite dirty.

MR: It is dark and dirty. It’s meant to be, because that’s what Venice was really like. The light falls in a particular kind of a way. I guess the painters of that time painted that light; the Venetian painters. If you set it in a particular period and time, then you get the pleasure of recreating a world and allowing people into the world of the 16^th century and actually believing it.

LS: Lynn, your Portia is a dimensional performance of intelligence, romance, strength—what they sometimes call a star turn. You can see her transition from hopeless romantic ingénue to iron-fisted trial lawyer. She comes out at a completely new place at the end of the film.

Lynn Collins: Yes. Portia is an amazing role for a female to play because you do have to take the journey with her. It’s not something you can pussyfoot around. You have to go and transform yourself and really claim your intelligence, or I don’t think it works.

Michael was adamant about us looking at our characters as human beings who have flaws and weaknesses. Every character in this play gets sort of trapped by his or her flaws. With her, she tastes blood in the courtroom scene and really goes way too far with it—just like Shylock and his revenge; he goes so far with it. In that way, I think that’s her flaw. She has so much energy, so much intelligence, so much power, when she realizes it, it’s dangerous, because she’s so young. It’s like a drug. She kind of overdoses on it. It changes her.

LS: With Shakespeare, how much of what you do is actually technique-based versus human behaving and reacting in the moment?

LC: When you’re doing something like Shakespeare that percentage fluctuates. In rehearsal, I know that most of what I was doing was about 80% technical and 20%- then actually when we were filming, I’d throw it all away! All of that naturally would just come back to me when we were shooting. In a time of stress and nerves, it was still right there, which was pretty great.

LS: Michael, I think we have to talk about Al Pacino’s complex performance, as well as Jeremy Irons’ different kind of work. I find Irons, in a completely opposite way, to be as powerful as Pacino.

MR: They both have superlative technique. You actually do need superlative technique, because Shakespeare will find you out if you don’t. You don’t have to have great technique to be a great movie actor, but to do Shakespeare, you do. And that doesn’t mean that somehow or another it’s better, it’s just how it is. Actors find it very satisfying, because they do learn to do it. And then when you can do it, it’s immensely satisfying. By satisfying I mean you do it so that it sounds natural. Anyone can recite it.

Al and Jeremy come from completely different ends of the spectrum. Jeremy is a real classical actor who sort of nails it in one take, walks on the set, does it, then walks off again! Al is a tortured method actor who is extremely nervous and extremely superstitious. He takes several takes just to get into it and then sort of wallows around in it. But each one of them brings an absolute focus and intensity to what they do, particularly Al, which affects everybody on the set. The fact is, if you take seventeen takes to do something as opposed to one, it takes more time, and if your time is short then everybody gets nervous! He’s sort of neurotic about that, but that’s because he cares about what he’s doing. I was astonished in rehearsals at the clarity with which he delivered the words.

LS: Lynn, you’re on the verge of a big movie career. How does a young American actress today look to the future and look out for longevity? Is there a way to look forward and say, ‘This is the way that I want to chart out the next five years of my career so I’m still a working actress a decade from now,’ or is that even possible?

LC: I think one thing is to stay out of (the) press! (Laughs). I think you have to balance how much you do. And the other thing is I got so much advice from everybody throughout this movie that was, ‘Don’t just take the next job. Even if it means get a loan, don’t do anything until you think it’s right.’ And it took a year of offers coming in for me to say, ‘Okay, this is one that actually makes sense.’ It’s really difficult because you finish a film like this and I felt so much in tune and fit as an actress, and I really haven’t been able to use it! So you wait, and if that means you don’t work because it’s not right, that’s what you do. I also feel like because I do have an education and there are so many other things that I want to do, that if Hollywood doesn’t- I have other things.

MR: She has a great career in the theater if the movies don’t beckon. It’s very simple, because she’s a real actress. I don’t mean that other people aren’t, but she’s a legit actress, which means that she can do whatever she wants really. And she might find the movies not challenging enough at some point, do you know what I mean? It’s dependent on other things besides the capacity to act.