Review: Merchant of Venice 1936 at LOWRY is ‘bold and haunting reimagining of Shakespeare’s classic’

Following a sold out run at Watford Palace Theatre and originally produced in association with HOME Manchester, The Merchant of Venice 1936 is back on home turf at LOWRY within the intimate Quay Theatre.

This is more than a contemporary Shakespearean adaptation; the text is entirely reworked to accommodate the context of the ongoing tension between Jews and Christians in the East End of London in the 1930s.

The Merchant of Venice 1936 at LOWRY

Adapted and directed by Brigid Larmour with Tracy-Ann Oberman, the project was initiated by Oberman’s interest in reframing Shylock as an East End matriarch in the 1930s which inspired Larmour’s reconstruction of the problematic antisemitic characters of Antonio, Portia, and Gratiano into British fascists of that time.

In keeping with the basic structure of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, Antonio approaches Shylock for a loan to help his friend, Bassanio, pursue Portia. Shylock has reservations about giving Antonio the money due to his antisemitic remarks but ultimately cuts him a deal wherein if the loan is not repaid within three months, the penalty will be a pound of his flesh in return.

This is reframed within the context of Antonio and his friends being members of the British Union of Fascists, and Shylock’s character being Jewish as originally written.

Tracy-Ann Oberman

The Merchant of Venice 1936 has a fantastically talented cast, including Tracy-Ann Oberman, recognised for extensive theatre and television credits (EastEnders, Doctor Who, and Friday Night Dinner) who is not only the primary lead as Shylock, a Jewish Moneylender running her business in the East End of London, but is also the associate director of the production.

Joseph Millson brilliantly portrays the hateful, fascist Antonio, Gavin Fowler and Xavier Starr are his cronies Bassanio and Gratiano. Portia is played by Georgie Fellows who does a brilliant job at drawing us in to an outwardly unlikable character.

The talented Evie Hargreaves

Important to note here are the multiple roles embodied by many of the cast, and Evie Hargreaves is fantastic at this, doubling as Mary and Nerissa. Gráinne Dromgoole, Mikhail Sen, Alex Zur and Elly Roberts give equally good performances in their respective roles.

This set design centralises a shop front representative of those owned and operated on the streets of London and slowly starts to degrade throughout the course of the play as targeted vandalism, graffiti, and posters are thrown upon Shylock’s storefront.

This is hidden by a sheer rippling curtain that gets drawn for scenes set taking place in Portia’s home in Belmont. Projections of clips from newsreels and archival images of newspapers are cast upon the storefront to further assert the context of what was occurring in society at this time.

As the play ramps up towards its finale, the set and props used throughout, such as chairs, tables, dining equipment, are pulled out and piled up as a barricade to represent The Battle of Cable Street (October 1936).

It is during this closing scene that Oberman breaks character and provides extra contextual information of this and explains that her grandmother was involved, as well as the ties it has with Manchester.

Tickets for The Merchant of Venice 1936 at LOWRY

The Merchant of Venice 1936 is a labour of love made by its producers. It is running until Saturday 1st March at LOWRY. Tickets are available here and start at £32, this show is eligible under LOWRY’s Under 30’s scheme so 18-30 year olds can bag tickets for just £10 when using the code U30 in the checkout bar before selecting their seats.

Accessible performances are as follows: audio described on Wednesday 26th February 2:30pm, with a touch tour commencing an hour prior (1:30pm), and BSL interpreted performance on Saturday 1st March 2:30pm. The show’s run time is two hours including an interval.

You can get tickets by clicking here