OSCAR Hammerstein II, Jewish from his father’s side, wrote the lyrics to one of the most politically and socially telling songs of the 20th century for the musical South Pacific. You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught is often overlooked in the Rodgers and Hammerstein canon, but in 13 lines (the last two verses are omitted from the film and every production I have ever seen) it encapsulates how fear and hatred of the “different’ is passed from generation to generation.

After basking in Macmillan’s never-had-it-so-good era, we are fast plunging into another period of verbally, physically, and, perhaps more frighteningly, what is now known as virtual, polarisation.

So there could hardly be a better time for Jewish actor Tracy-Ann Oberman to take her radical interpretation of Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice 1936 out on the road, after its triumphant run in London. She has based her Shylock on her matriarchal grandmother, who escaped Nazi Germany only to find herself and her new community confronted by Oswald Mosley and his blackshirts. It must have been tempting to play the money-lender for sympathy, but Oberman makes no attempts at that. Can she choose between her anguish at the elopement of her daughter and her fury at the loss of her money? No, she can’t. The only “excuses” come from the entitled, monstrously cruel and careless behaviour of the rest of the characters in the play.

The original has been adapted, edited and cut-and-pasted by Oberman and director Brigid Larmour, so for those currently studying the play, the order of some of the words might be a bit confusing. Left in are the big set-piece scenes – the borrowing of the money, the trial and the denouement. The setting is London’s East End, peopled with buffoonish toffs throwing their increasingly anti-semitic weight about as they slum-it in sleazy clubs, backed up by thuggish police officers. The casket scene, in which Portia’s hand in marriage is decided by three suitors, seems both incongruous and unnecessary, other than to provide the ring that has its moment at the end.

Not only is the merchant Antonino (the charismatic Joseph Millson) portrayed as an arrogant member of the British Union of Fascists, but Portia (Georgie Fellows) is modelled on Diana Mitford, the bright young thing who married Mosley after her divorce from the Guinness heir. It all looked very Art Deco as she saw off two suitors who chose gold and silver, giving her a chance to spit out insults to the colour of their skin, and it sets the scene for the scarifying court scene.

The ending is extraordinary, and it seems like a spoiler to tell you that the group who started the play as a party in Shylock’s house, end up building barricades against the encroaching fascist mob.

The Merchant of Venice 1936 is a loud and visceral warning against extremism, passionately felt by the actors, anchored by a revetting central performance and provoking much thought and examination. It shows how the play has perhaps helped to fuel the anti-semitic hatred down the centuries.

GP-W