The Merchant of Venice 1936 review

Many a production has wrestled with the thorny issues that lie, from a modern, more enlightened perspective, at the heart of Shakespeare’s problematic play. Tracy-Ann Oberman and director Brigid Larmour’s skilfully reimagined, 1930s London-set adaptation successfully reframes the prejudice that runs through it.

Oberman’s gender-switched Shylock is presented as a fiercely loyal, heavily accented Jewish East End matriarch who is willing to do anything to protect her family and its fortune. Her money-lending business is located on Cable Street, the site of a very real clash between Oswald Mosley’s far-right supporters and anti-fascist protestors in 1936. But even before the riots begin – strikingly depicted through the news-reel footage in Greta Zabulyte’s projections and Sarah Weltman’s sound – she is mocked and smeared by the community around her, among them her backstabbing housekeeper Gobbo, a gossip-monger played with devilish relish by Jessica Dennis.    

The historical backdrop to Larmour’s subtly reworked adaptation – Shakespeare’s verse is largely kept intact, with just a few “golly”s and other Wodehousian exclamations thrown in – helps to explain the extremeness of Shylock’s actions and her hatred of the titular merchant. It also helps hugely that Antonio (a disquietingly steely and self-assured Raymond Coulthard) is recast here as a loathsome, black-shirted, red armband-wearing British fascist. 
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