One of the world's foremost directors of Shakespeare, one of Japan's most outstanding translators of the Bard and a star-studded Japanese cast have teamed up to bring "The Merchant of Venice" to Tokyo this month.
Englishman Gregory Doran, who staged the most productions — five — in last year's acclaimed "Complete Works" series by the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in Stratford-upon-Avon admits to having been a "Shakespeare addict" since he listened to a record of Mendelssohn's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" when he was a child.
At the age of 13, Doran recalls, he told his mother that he wanted to be a Shakespeare actor after she took him to see his first Shakespeare play, "As You Like It," in Stratford. Despite treading the boards many times, however, Doran, 48, says he realized his greatest strength was not as an actor but as a director.