By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2

WHEN?: Sunday 29 December 2024, runs through 25 January 2025 and then tours the UK (details below) RUNTIME: 120 minutes with a 20-minute interval

This production began as a conversation in 2018 when Oberman told director Brigid Larmour she wanted to play Shylock as an East End matriarch in the 1930s, inspired by her great grandmother.

• Read on for reasons including where and how to see this production on its tour after this memorable run

This is our 1st visit to this venue since its beautiful renovation reinstating it back to its original heritage 1930s design and we’re in the front row as the cast talk to us as they arrive on the stage through the aisles and up stairs to it in this 630-seat auditorium.

Bassanio, played by Gavin Fowler appears to flirt with us perhaps foreshadowing a late and unexpected plot twist, and Oberman’s Shylock is chatty while Joseph Millson (Mary Poppins, Prince Edward Theatre) as Antonio is handing out apple juice to lucky audience members which makes us feel welcome.

There’s a programme note about the ‘heavily cut’ script and, as well as Shylock, Lancelot Gobbo has switched genders to Mary.

To build the sense of the East End Cable Street world, Salerio and Solanio have become a Blackshirt and a PC respectively with some of their lines given to Mary to make the new character richer.

The Merchant Of Venice isn’t our favourite Shakespeare and here the relocation and gender swap allows us to rethink our prejudice and the repayment of ‘a pound of flesh’ to Jewish moneylender Shylock.

It’s a play that has been criticised as anti-semetic because of Shylock’s insistence on the legal right to the pound of flesh being in opposition to their seemingly universal plea for the rights of all people suffering discrimination and here the latter is given weight by the new setting.

This year we saw a musical of the events of Cable Street at Southwark Playhouse and it’s clearly a period which speaks to many of our perceived problems now.

This production originated at Watford Palace Theatre and will have made most sense when it transferred to the atmospheric Wilton’s Music Hall in the East End of London in November 2023, a 10-minute walk from where the battle of Cable Street took place, where friends saw it and raved about it.

This is a brave restaging and it largely works in part because of the commitment to it by Oberman (Stepping Out, Vaudeville Theatre) who gives a truly memorable performance in a controversial play given an inspired reframing.

After this West End run and from 4 February this production embarks on a tour to Liverpool, Bath, Leeds, Salford, Fareham, Cardiff, Southend, Birmingham that is well worth your time.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Trafalgar Theatre Tickets and The Merchant Of Venice 1936
• Have you seen a Tracy-Ann Oberman show before and what did you think of this 1? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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