The Merchant of Venice (1936), starring Tracy-Ann Oberman as Shylock, runs at HOME in Manchester March 15–25.
The reinvention of Shakespeare spotlights the rise of Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists in the 1930s, and how the East End community came together to stop them in the Battle of Cable Street.
This production reimagines Shylock as an East End matriarch, a widowed refugee from Russian pogroms. She is running a small business from a cramped house, working to give her daughter Jessica a better life. When aristocratic anti-Semite Antonio needs a loan, he makes a dangerous bargain.