A Short Note About Shylock's Daughter

In our review of the "startlingly good" Merchant of Venice at Seattle Shakespeare Company, we left out one other reason we enjoyed the show--the performance of Melanie Moser as Jessica, Shylock's daughter. Few American actors make good friends with Shakespearean speech--they tend to emphasize the important words as landmarks--and their awkward hops from point to point add to the dislocation audiences feel as they struggle to adapt their ear to the rhythm. But fewer have Moser's talent, which is to speak Shakespeare as if he's finally put into words--into these words--what she feels. The emotion lies in the flights of language, in the way the way words pour forth, and Moser nails this.