This rousing call to arms adaptation of Shakespeare’s antisemitic play, unsurprisingly Hitler’s favourite, stars Tracy-Ann Oberman as a fiery Jewish matriarch rubbing up against 1930s fascist Britain in a disturbing conflict piece challenging institutionalised racism head on.
The evening opens with the full cast gathering on stage to light Friday night candles in a barucha (prayer) for wine to welcome in the Jewish festival of Passover. It's Seder night and the Hebrew Manish tana, translated as “why is this night different from all other nights?” is read out by youngest person at the table.
This version of The Merchant of Venice is already vastly different from any other, so the irony is not lost. There’s an innocence as the play opens onto such sweet purity of familial observations soon to be shattered into smithereens in the face of pernicious antisemitism. Oberman's Merchant is reset in London’s East End with Shylock played out as a tough-talking, widowed, single mother running a small business from her home in Cable Street. Racial tensions in the area are brewing as the storm clouds of war are on the horizon. Shylock is desperate to protect her daughter’s future.
When the suave merchant Antonio swoops in to make an appearance and use his serpent charms to demand a loan, a high-stakes deal is struck. Will Shylock take her revenge, and who will pay the ultimate price? Here is a woman who will not be defeated, and Shakespeare’s language inhabited by Oberman takes on great resonance. Oberman’s Shylock is a survivor of pogroms against Jews in Russia and now she faces the threat of Oswald Mosley and his gang of fascists.
In 1936, Hitler’s Nazis were rallying support across Europe, whilst Mosley was seeking to fuel anti-Jewish hatred among working-class Londoners. He announced a march through the East End which the government refused to ban. In the 1936 Cable Street riots, over 300,000 people turned out to block the fascists in angry protest.
Director Brigid Larmour’s adaptation brings this episode of British history to life in a fast-moving and visually engaging way. Even before the riots begin—strikingly broadcast through the newsreel footage in Greta Zabulyte’s projections and Sarah Weltman’s sound—Shylock is taunted by the community around her, notably let down by gossipy housekeeper Gobbo, played with ingratiating two-faced charm by Nancy Farino.
Costumes are sumptuous, from floating silk dresses to flamboyant fur-lapelled overcoats, and the sets by Liz Cooke build an atmospheric sense of place, where darkly lit houses offer solace for families to disappear behind curtains out of sight from the impending threat of violence. Then there's a sonorous score from Erran Baron Cohen that lends tone to the play’s unsettling time period.
Performances are all excellent. Raymond Coulthard makes a convincing slithering, elitist, smooth-tongued Antonio, posing with undercurrents of cloak and dagger villain written into his performance. Behind his simpering grimaces, Antonio constantly appears threatening, even towards Portia, who appears to have stepped right out of a Mitford Sisters drama. Hannah Morrish’s Portia is pitch-perfect. All clipped vowels and flowing silks, her cold, piercing, blue eyes are every bit as insidious as Antonia’s Blackshirt behaviour as she casts evil stares in the direction of recently converted Jessica, Shylock’s daughter, with deep-rooted antisemitism simmering behind elegant smiles.
But it's Oberman who steals the show as Shylock as a blisteringly brilliant female powerhouse who makes clear that she will do whatever it takes to protect her own, in this case her daughter. Her Yiddish, lilting accent only serves to highlight difference and a deeper understanding of her character’s roots, given that this story is so personal. Like so many Jews of her generation, the story is passed down from her great grandmother who left Russia to escape pogroms and fought against Mosley in the East End riots. Such authenticity seeps into the pores of her portrayal, and as the play unfolds, we feel pity for the heartbreakingly tragic Shylock, forced to take on the British aristocracy, church and state. What happens when a Jewish woman challenges such institutions is at the very heart of this adaptation. The outcome is extremely painful to watch.
When the play ends, the audience are beckoned by the actors to rise their feet to participate in a motion of solidarity against racial intolerance as the cast chant, "They Shall Not Pass,” a reference again to the Cable Street protests. Some spectators nervously shuffle to their feet, and others practically jump onstage. As tensions run high in ethnic communities given the current political climate fuelled by war in Israel / Gaza, there is no choice but to stand in unison at risk otherwise of appearing not to support the values enshrouding the performance. No pressure then for the shy and retiring.
Yet it does bring into sharp focus that, sadly, Shakespeare’s drama, riddled with antisemitic tropes, even though it was penned 200 years after the Jews of Britain were expelled, continues to shine a light on contemporary divisions within society as it seems that human behaviour changes little over the chasms of space and time. Tragically, in terms of Merchant, racism and antisemitism is on the rise, and this cautionary tale deserves staging as a powerfully dramatic reminder that we must continue to fight against hate.