Abstract
Performed in a febrile geopolitical moment in which antisemitism can no longer be ignored, The Merchant of Venice 1936 in Wilton's East Music Hall was a brave and provocative production (see Kath Bradley and Peter J. Smith’s review of this production at the Swan Theatre in this section). The addition of 1936 to the play's title was an explicit declaration of the production's vital energies. A passion project for Tracy-Ann Oberman (Shylock), Shakespeare's Venice was reimagined as London's East End in the late 1930s, exposing the sham narratives about a tolerant Britain on the eve of the Second World War. The production centred itself around The Battle of Cable Street, an event where diverse migrant and working-class communities stood with their Jewish neighbours against the march of the British Union of Fascists led by Sir Oswald Mosley. Wilton's East Music Hall served as a makeshift hospital and mustering point during the battle, and knowledge of this venue's direct connection to the production's imaginary brought a historic power that suffused the performance.
This production was a dramatic manifestation of the Jewish scholar D. M. Cohen's unequivocal declaration that The Merchant of Venice is ‘a profoundly and crudely antisemitic play’ (Cohen 53). Oberman's gender-swapped Shylock, stony and severe, took inspiration from Oberman's great-grandmother, Annie, a working-class Jewish matriarch and one of many who fled violent antisemitic pogroms in the Russian Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The play's opening was an early cue to the audience to align their sympathetic and moral energies with Shylock, fighting against both misogyny and antisemitism. An intimate and warm tableau of Shylock's shabbat meal was a visual and acoustic paean to friendship, family, and faith, but this ritual was soon rudely ruptured by video compilations of maps, captions, and newsreels of The Battle of Cable Street, which were projected against the upstage wall. In turn, this gave way to the cold crystalline world of a London club, with Antonio (Raymond Coulthard), Bassanio (Gavin Fowler), and their compatriots carousing in full tails, Bullingdon boys par excellence. The production made it clear that systemic institutional privilege informed the fascism circulating in the play, represented by the Christian characters both male and female. Antonio's black shirt was a visual emblem of Mosley's Blackshirts. Meanwhile Portia (Hannah Morrish), a pretty and pearlescent blonde, evoked the spectre of Diana Mitford as she swirled around onstage in an opalite gown in the Belmont scenes – a location that the audience was encouraged to imagine as a kind of Henley-on-Thames, a private estate away from the grime and grit of London's East End.
Oberman commanded the stage as Shylock. The flashes of tenacity, ruthlessness, and unlikability built into Shylock's character took on a fresh meaning when transposed onto a migrant widowed matriarch, grafting to survive and support her family, while being spat at by police on the streets. There was a quiet dignity to Shylock's domestic domain, which became increasingly battered and bruised as the riots progressed. The scenic backdrop of Shylock's house became a canvas for antisemitic graffiti and posters during the cable street riots of the play world; Gratiano (Xavier Starr) brandished an England flag as ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ resounded menacingly. The attacks lent a nice resonance to Shylock's lines: ‘Lock up my doors […] Clamber not you up to the casements then, / Nor thrust your head into the public street’. (2.5.28–31). In the trial scene, Shylock was diminutive and vulnerable, and stood centre stage as the forces of institutional privilege closed in around her. Given Shylock's evocative Hebrew accent, it was her dumbfounded silence in the trial scene that caught the attention many audience members around me, even as she moved to sit on the stage's periphery for the remainder of the final act.
Considering that Oberman and director Brigid Larmour were so keen to explore the dramatic potentialities of turning Shylock into a steely Jewish matriarch and emphasising the historical role of female Jewish moneylenders in the programme and the production's digital platform, the matrilineal energies in the play felt a little flat. The relationship between Shylock and Jessica could have been more carefully and richly developed. Peter Kirwan reviewed the same production at Watford Palace Theatre earlier this year (10 March 2023). Praising the production's commitment to the twentieth century story it wanted to tell, Kirwan felt that the play's integrity suffered as result. With taut textual cutting, the casket plot felt a little perfunctory, as did the tussle about Portia's ring, and it was a shame that several characters, including Gratiano, Lorenzo, and Nerissa felt outlined, rather than fully coloured and nuanced. They ultimately blended into the play world's Christian fascistic backdrop. Despite the narrative incongruity at the end of the performance, as the world of Belmont metamorphosed into a tableau of the barricades of The Battle of Cable Street, I found this extra-textual moment quite moving, an example of theatre's affective power. As the cast chanted ‘you shall not pass’ and ‘every generation together’, young members of the audience rose unelicited from their seats to join cast members onstage, answering their call for solidarity against all forms of hatred. I left the performance feeling that despite the faultlines in the handling of the playtext, this production was dedicated to the message it wanted to convey, and it did so persuasively and passionately.