IN its production of The Merchant of Venice seen by this reviewer in the Everyman Palace, Cork Second Age establishes within seconds that this is a play about money.

This is a production, lively and theatrical enough to hold in thrall the target audiences of hundreds at a time of other wise restless teenagers. There is a lot of quite effective music; the calligraphic set by Barbara Bradshaw is necessarily adapted to the touring programme, yet is both valid and, useful.

Because the play is a construction which has everything required of it for entertainment - a wager, an elopement, a shipwreck, a lottery, a theft, a court case and the threat of much blood it can survive what is essentially a light hearted, almost superficial reading, yet it is an achievement for Second Age that Shakespeare's scaffolding emerges so cleanly from Shakespeare's plot.