A radical look at a problem play

SHAKESPEARE’s dark drama The Merchant of Venice may have one of the most famous speeches in the whole canon, but it is a difficult play for modern audiences. We struggle with the arrogant anti-semitism of Antonio and most of us surely squirm at the twin horrors of Shylock’s merciless revenge and the humiliation he suffers in legal retribution.

A radical 2024 production of this problematic play at London’s Criterion Theatre has brought it back into sharp focus – The Merchant of Venice 1936, starring Tracy-Ann Oberman as Shylock, comes to Bath Theatre Royal from Monday 10th to Saturday 15th February, with Joseph Millson as Antonio and Georgie Fellows, who hails from Bath, as Portia.

Shakespeare’s cruel play, once described as a comedy, is transported to 1930s East London against a backdrop of political unrest and the Battle of Cable Street in this thrilling stage performance. The Merchant of Venice 1936 visits Bath. One reviewer wrote of Brigid Larmour’s production: “An astonishing, full-blooded performance. For anyone who wonders how to produce Shakespeare in the 21st century, this really is it”

With the city on the brink of political unrest, fascism sweeping across Europe and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists threatening a paramilitary march through the Jewish East End, strong-willed single mother Shylock runs a pawnbroking business from her house in Cable Street where Mosley will march.

When charismatic, antisemitic aristocrat Antonio comes to her for a loan, a high-stakes deal is struck. Will Shylock take her revenge, and who will pay the ultimate price?

Tracy-Ann Oberman, who is associate director of the production, is the first British actress to play Shylock. She says: “The message of my female Shylock – based on my great grandma, a widow in the East End standing up to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, with all her neighbours and others horrified by the message of BUF – feels more pertinent than ever. The play is about unity, standing together against hatred and the play’s impact has been beyond my wildest hopes and ambitions for it.”

She is well known on television as Chrissie Watts in more than 200 episodes of EastEnders. Her stage credits range from Edmond with Kenneth Branagh to the West End run of Boeing Boeing, and as Golde in a memorable production of Fiddler On The Roof, with Omid Djalilli at Chichester Festival Theatre in 2017. At Bath Theatre Royal she appeared in The Vagina Monologues in 2010, Earthquakes in London in 2011, Stepping Out in 2016 and Noises Off in 2022, both of which transferred to the West End.

Joseph Millson returns to Bath after starring alongside Tracy-Ann Oberman in Noises Off in 2022, prior to the West End transfer in 2023. His previous productions at Bath include Betrayal in 2020, As You Like It in The Peter Hall Season 2003 and Salad Days in 1997.

Georgie Fellows attended Curtain Up Theatre School locally before graduating from the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Her theatre credits include the title role in Sappho at London’s Southwark Playhouse; Henry I for Rabble Theatre and The Living Newspaper at the Royal Court Theatre.

Other parts are played by Evie Hargreaves as Mary and Nerissa, Mikhail Sen as Lorenzo and Maharajah, and Elly Roberts as Stefania and Blackshirt. Also reprising their West End roles are Gavin Fowler as Bassanio, Gráinne Dromgoole as Jessica, Xavier Starr as Gratiano and Alex Zur as Yuval, The Duke and Blackshirt.

 

Photograph by Marc Brenner