The Merchant of Venice 1936
Malvern Theatres, Great Malvern

NONE of Shakespeare’s plays has been so highjacked by history as the play known in its own time as The Jew of Venice.  

The character who has seized the imagination of leading actors and audiences throughout the ages appears in only five scenes and speaks only 355 lines of the text, and yet Shylock has been the focus of both anti- and pro-Jewish productions for centuries.

Director Brigid Lamour’s adaptation is particularly opportune at this critical moment. 

Set, as the title establishes, in the East End in 1936, when Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists was stoking anti-semitism among sections of the increasingly dispossessed working class, Shylock, played superbly by Tracy-Ann Oberman, is a Jewish matriarch and money-lender living in an increasingly dangerous society.

We first meet the extended family at their Shabat meal. Lucky members of the audience are offered wine to join them in the Kiddush celebration attempting to shut out the aggressive world outside.

From there Shakespeare takes over when arrogant toffs, already flirting with the would-be Nazis, find themselves in need of a substantial loan from despised sources.

Shylock’s “merry bond,” the repayment of default being a pound of flesh from Raymond Coulthard’s wealthy entrepreneur Antonio, whose enterprises are at present all at sea, gets the action rolling. 

The movement to Belmont, apparently the toffs’ end of town, finds Hannah Morrish’s Portia, a high-society girl from the huntin’ fraternity brushing off would-be suitors until her ideal, Gavin Fowler’s Bassanio, turns up.

This foreplay leads to the famous scene when Shylock, an isolated woman before a hostile court, demands that her bond should be paid.

Skilfully cut to two hours including an interval, this production’s sympathies are all with Shylock, who here hesitates, momentarily swayed after listening to the disguised Portia’s plea for mercy, yet agonised by the theft of both her daughter and her ducats, is determined to wreak revenge. 

Throughout we are reminded of the political context with back projections of the increasingly desperate daily news leading to the Battle of Cable Street when the East End rallied to deny the fascist thugs entry.

Finally the audience is encouraged to join the cast to assert: “They shall not pass.”

If the play loses Shakespeare’s characteristic dramatic ambiguity, it starkly sets before us an image and a message that speaks to a current moment in history.

On tour until February 10 2024. For more information see: merchantofvenice1936.co.uk.