Tickets have gone on sale today for The Merchant Of Venice starring Tracy-Ann Oberman - two years after it was originally supposed to be staged.

The star takes the role of a female Shylock in the hotly awaited production long delayed by the pandemic. The radically visionary staging switches the setting from Renaissance Italy to Cable Street in the East End in the 1930s.Oberman’s Shylock is now a widowed refugee from Russian pogroms, who is striving to give her daughter Jessica a better life.

The production will address the dark legacy of the British Fascist party, and its followers’ violent clashes with the Jewish community in the Battle of Cable Street in 1936.In this telling, the play’s heroine, Portia, and her coterie are aristocratic fascists.

The staging draws strongly upon the experience of Ms Oberman’s family. Her great-grandmother and her sons - the stars’ great-uncles - were part of the Battle of Cable Street.Explaining the development of the production with director Brigid Larmour, Ms Oberman said: “I’ve always wanted to reclaim Merchant in some way and wanted to see how it would change with a single mother Shylock.“

"My own great-grandma and great aunts were single mothers, widows, left in the East End to run the businesses and the homes, which they did with an iron fist. When I spoke about it to Brigid, she instantly got it, and said it gave a brilliant way into the problematic aspects of characters like Antonio and Portia. She saw them as aristocratic young Mosleyites, supporters of the British Union of Fascists led by Oswald Mosley.

That led us to Cable Street, with pawn shops and moneylending under the counter of shmatter stalls and seamstress jobs, in the weeks leading up to Mosley’s Fascist march against ‘The Jew’ in 1936.”

Ms Oberman added: “This adaptation will appeal to all immigrant families with strong matriarchs.

"Everything starts and ends at home and strong mothers have always understood this.”

After a run at the Watford Palace Theatre the production will go on a national tour, with dates to be announced.The Merchant Of Venice, Watford Palace Theatre, 28 February-11 March 2023

https://watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk/events/the-merchant-of-venice-1936/