Ruth Leon’s Pocket Theatre Review

The Merchant of Venice – Criterion Theatre

This production of The Merchant of Venice begins and ends with two scenes that Shakespeare never wrote, one a Passover dinner, the other a rousing call to arms against Fascism. If it were not closing soon I would urge you all to see it without fail because this play, written 400 years ago, set in London 90 years ago, and given electrifying immediacy by Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Shylock, is the best illustration of, and cure for, the anti-semitism we see all around us right now. 

We don’t know whether the overt Jew hatred that Shakespeare wrote into his play reflected his opinion or his disgust, but we know that a good director, Brigid Larmour, and a brilliant performance from Tracy-Ann Oberman, can make his words sing directly into our current zeitgeist and persuade a packed house of jaded Londoners on a rainy Thursday afternoon to rise to their feet, shouting the famous slogan of the anti-Fascists in the ‘30s, at the Battle of Cable Street and in the Spanish Civil War, “No Passeran” “They Shall Not Pass”.

In this production Tracy-Ann Oberman is at once the Jewish moneylender of Venice’s Ghetto and the doyenne of the East End of London in 1936, when the entire East End rose up together to combat the scourge of Sir Oswald Mosley’s Fascists in the Battle of Cable Street. Mosley’s Blackshirts were beaten back by the decency and solidarity of the community.

The final moving scene of this production of a 400-year old play reminds us of how to combat tyranny whether the anti-Semites are 16th century Venetian merchants, 20th century Fascists, or our own home-grown racists who are threatening the Jewish community today. 

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