We went last week to the Almeida Theatre's extraordinary production of Merchant of Venice.  It's set in Las Vegas, with gaming machines and glitz everywhere, and intermittent appearances from an Elvis imitator.    Portia is a dizzy blonde on 6-inch heels, and the competition to win her  hand is pitched as a TV reality show.  The accents are full-on American, except for Shylock who speaks with a thick German intonation, initially from behind a broad business desk. For the first three acts I enjoyed the imagination that had gone into it and laughed at the jokes embedded into the glitz, but wondered how they were going to pull it into meaningful…