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Remesh Panicker is sold on Shylock

SINGAPORE — The Merchant Of Venice marks Remesh Panicker’s return to the stage after a nearly six-year-long break. For a brief moment, it looked like he was going to scrap that idea as well.

SINGAPORE — The Merchant Of Venice marks Remesh Panicker’s return to the stage after a nearly six-year-long break. For a brief moment, it looked like he was going to scrap that idea as well.

“I momentarily chickened out after saying yes. My son was kind of upset when I told him I wasn’t going to be around for the evenings. But he got over it really quickly,” he quipped.

Family life (his son is seven, his daughter is three) and non-theatre work, including regular voice-over work for Channel NewsAsia and Discovery Channel television documentaries, has kept the 53-year-old actor busy. His last major theatre project was 2008’s The King Lear Project by Ho Tzu Nyen and Fran Borgia, although he did a small Christmas show with a friend, actor-director Gerald Chew, in 2010, titled A Christmas Adam.

Despite offers over the last couple of years, he admitted that he didn’t feel compelled to do anything — until the opportunity to play Shylock in Singapore Repertory Theatre’s latest Shakespeare In The Park came along.

“When I was told they were doing it, I thought, I’d love to do Shylock — and it means you’re not on stage all the time!” Panicker said.

Shakespeare’s iconic Jewish moneylender — he of that memorable “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech — was one of those characters Panicker said he just had to do. “When I read The Merchant Of Venice at the age of 15, Shylock was pretty much the bad guy. And that’s probably how he was originally played.

“But the brilliance of Shakespeare’s work is that it takes on a different relevance for our time. I was chatting to Bruce (Guthrie, director) about how there are no black and white characters in this production. (Shylock) is probably closer to an everyman, with different shades of good and bad.”

Panicker had performed in the first Shakespeare In The Park production, Hamlet, and the former SRT Associate Artistic Director has been impressed by the annual series’ growth. “It’s gotten so much bigger and the shows are getting better and better. I didn’t go to drama school, so in production, there’s a lot to learn.”

That’s an interesting comment, coming from one of the local theatre scene’s familiar faces — when he deigns to act, that is. But Panicker dismissed the idea of him being a theatre insider. “To be called an insider would be a compliment, but slightly inaccurate. People half my age have done more than I have,” he said.

Still, Panicker did observe changes in the theatre scene. “The stakes are higher now. There’s a lot more money around for theatre companies to expand their reach,” he said. “It’s more professional now; and with that comes the need to satisfy an audience with ever-increasing expectations.”

 

The Merchant Of Venice runs from May 2 to 25, 7.30pm, Fort Canning Park. Tickets from S$45 at Sistic.

Correction: The original article stated that Mr Panicker is 40 years old. This is incorrect. He is 53 years old. We apologise for the error. This article was edited on April 21, 2014 at 10.10am.

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