Child's Play: A Review of BYU's Merchant of Venice

      I finally got to see the play last weekend, a week later than everyone else did.  I felt really behind the times having not seen it, but it sold out so fast and there was nothing I could do about it!  Crazy.  But, one advantage to seeing it later was that I already had an idea in mind for what my research topic should be.  So as I watched the play I was focusing on specific aspects of it, rather than on the play in its entirety. 
      I've already posted a little about my chosen topic:  Christian themes in Shakespeare's plays, and more specifically, the conflict between Christians and non-Christians.  One thing I've been trying to do while looking for social proof on my topic was to see how these themes are handled in different Shakespeare productions.  I would like to look more closely at the differences between productions of just one play (Merchant of Venice), but if I can't get enough feedback on just one, I can look at these themes across a several of Shakespeare's plays.
      It was extremely helpful, then, that we were required to attend BYU's child-focused production of The Merchant of Venice.  What interested me was that the issue of Christians versus non-Christians was replaced with a more general issue of the evils of bullying and judging others simply because they are "different."  It seems to me that the people behind the scenes of this production chose not to include the Christian issue because (a) the issue is really sensitive, especially today; (b) they didn't want Christians to appear "mean" to the children in the audience; and (c) they didn't want to give the children the idea that hating Jews is okay.  Obviously, bullying is a serious problem to children, so maybe that was also a factor; a discussion about bullying would be more relevant to a young child than a discussion about a long-standing racial and religious prejudice.  Children will understand that bullying is no good because they have actually experienced it in some way in their own lives.  But they probably would not be able to fully grasp the concept of hating people purely because of their heritage and beliefs.
      This is all my speculation, of course.  I don't know for sure what reasons they had for modifying the play in that way, so I want to try to contact the director or writer or pretty much anyone involved in the play who can shed some light on this topic.