The Merchant of Venice 1936 Reviews [Updated]

"Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Merchant of Venice 1936 feels deeply relevant in 2024" (Criterion Theatre)

"Oberman's timely passion-project – which moves Shakespeare's tragedy to London – has deepened with its West End transfer"

"Glowing reviews and public demand have put the wind in the sails of Oberman’s passion-project. And she’s cementing her place in the annals, given she’s the first British actress to play Shylock"

"The supreme achievement of the production therefore is to banish any complacency about the prejudice that assails Shylock as happening in some far-off Venice. Using the build-up to the Battle of Cable Street as the backdrop (with chilling newsreel footage projected across the gloomy street scenery), we see anti-Jewish graffiti and an act of yobbish urination outside Shylock’s house."

"Deploying a middle-European accent and an air of indomitable self-possession, Oberman is a compelling matriarchal presence."

"A commendable, accomplished and brave venture, all told, that deserves as much support as it can get."

"Shylock takes on Oswald Mosley’s Blackshirts" (Watford Palace Theatre)

"A striking, slick adaptation of Shakespeare’s problematic play sees Tracy-Ann Oberman play a Jewish matriarch up against the fascists of 1930s London"

"At the centre stands Oberman’s Shylock, the Jewish moneylender who demands “a pound of flesh” from Antonio (Raymond Coulthard) to exact justice and is punished with a forced conversion to Christianity as part of the play’s rather contrived happy ending."

"Oberman plays the role with a righteous anger and great inner strength. Her demand for flesh seems less driven by simple vengeance and more an outraged response to Mosley’s campaign of antisemitic persecution – as well as a single mother’s fearful defence against the rising forces conspiring to render her powerless."

"... the ideological underpinning here is much more rigorous, informing story and character, and showing both afresh."

"Larmour’s adaptation is slickly paced, with the verse sounding almost modern."

"There are some weaker aspects: Shylock’s daughter, Jessica (Gráinne Dromgoole), who betrays her, is too much a cypher and the mother-daughter relationship seems undercharged, while the back-screen projections revealing facts behind Mosley’s British Union of Fascists are heavy-handed. But these are quibbles in an impactful production that shows how an ideologically problematic text can be staged while serving as its own critique."

"A new vision for Shakespeare's problem play opens in Watford ahead of a tour" (Watford Palace Theatre)

"There's an extraordinary moment at the end of this neat reimagining of The Merchant of Venice when Tracy-Ann Oberman, playing Shylock, drops character and her heavy Hebrew accent to remind us, as the houselights come up, that as a society we are "better together". Such heavy-handed messaging could feel, well, rather trite. But at a time of ever-increasing polarity around so many issues, not least immigration, it feels both urgent and deeply moving."

"Oberman's performance is the anchor of her co-adaptor Brigid Larmour's impassioned production. It's a brave and deeply personal portrayal – she has based her pawn shop-owning Shylock on the story of her great-grandmother."

"... this bold and lucid interpretation."

"Shakespeare confronted and reassessed in The Merchant of Venice 1936" (Watford Palace Theatre)

"... it’s sometimes in the new plays and the most sweeping adaptations that we find the most electric responses... Some have argued that Shakespeare’s original should not be performed or taught at all. Actor Tracy-Ann Oberman does not agree: for her, it’s about confronting it and examining both the play and the history of antisemitism in Britain"

"The story unfolds on the eve of the Battle of Cable Street, when the East End working-class community forced back Mosley’s blackshirts. All this sharpens and heightens events in the play."

"Oberman gives a galvanising central performance, her dignity in the face of verbal insults and contempt giving way to despair and raw hatred when she loses her daughter to the people who torment her."

"Tracy-Ann Oberman is a magnetic Shylock" (Home Manchester)

"Stylish, timely and cleverly realised reimagining of Shakespeare"

"Many a production has wrestled with the thorny issues that lie, from a modern, more enlightened perspective, at the heart of Shakespeare’s problematic play. Tracy-Ann Oberman and director Brigid Larmour’s skilfully reimagined, 1930s London-set adaptation successfully reframes the prejudice that runs through it."

"Pitting Shylock and her family against an aristocratic, antisemitic elite – which includes Adam Buchanan’s horribly pitch-perfect, pencil-moustache-sporting spiv Bassanio and Hannah Morrish’s spoilt, Mitford sister-like heiress Portia – makes the denouement, where Shylock is duped out of the money she is owed and forced to convert to Christianity, all the more shocking."

"... in what is clearly a passion project for Oberman, it’s all anchored by her magnetic performance: playful, impassioned and heartbreaking."

"Tracy-Ann Oberman’s sharp study of antisemitism" (Wilton's Music Hall)

"In the current geopolitical climate, Shakespeare's 400-year-old play could not be more relevant"

"The text has been edited in somewhat choppy fashion and the storytelling is not clear in every section. Yet the 1936 setting is consistently potent and makes us listen afresh to a play we might think we know well; the number of times the words “Jew” and “Jewish” are spat out with venom, for example, is startling."

"In the current febrile geopolitical climate, which had led to an increase in antisemitic incidents in this country, this 400-year-old play could not be more relevant. Amid safety fears for our Jewish communities, it is no wonder that the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, was in the first night audience. Shakespeare’s insight and perspicacity have rarely seemed sharper."

"Tracy-Ann Oberman’s East End-set attempt to confront the antisemitism in Shakespeare’s play is thrilling in its boldness" (Criterion Theatre London)

"A passion project of its star and co-adaptor, the Jewish actor Tracy-Ann Oberman, it doesn’t so much reclaim Shakespeare’s play for the Jewish community as aggressively repurpose it."

"... the rabble-rousing finale set at the Battle of Cable Street is a truly bold move – in its way the equivalent of shoving in an epilogue to ‘Hamlet’ where you discover the Danish prince is actually fine. And the context is now so specific that while the text has been heavily edited, there is stuff that feels totally off-topic, notably the whole major plot line about Portia (Hannah Morrish) and her suitors. But again, this production isn’t trying to make nice with Shakespeare"

"The Cable Street finale makes questionable dramatic sense… but it’s spine-tingling nonetheless. It’s a production that doesn’t exactly work… but it doesn’t not work either."

"Tracy-Ann Oberman is electrifying" (Criterion Theatre)

"You can’t take your eyes off her. I’m not convinced the production really wants you to, which is both its strength and its limitation. You won’t miss the political import of this truncated repurposing by Oberman and her director, Brigid Larmour. You might just miss the presence of two men in black standing not far from each side of the stage. Ever since the October 7 attacks, the production has used extra security."

"Even while she stays obdurately uncuddly; even while her determination to get her pound of flesh from the defaulting Antonio remains grim. Yet Oberman also plays her as motivated more by a fervid desire for fair play than she is for vengeance."

"... while we all like a short running time in theory, Oberman needs more nuanced foes for the evening to take full dramatic flight. Grainne Dromgoole is excellent as Jessica, and Hannah Morrish’s performance as a dauntingly posh Portia takes off when she disguises herself as a lawyer."

"This East End Merchant of Venice is potent – but it could be peerless" (Watford Palace Theatre)

"Tracy-Ann Oberman makes history as the first British actress to play Shylock in this flawed but fascinating staging"

"This ambitious, insightful, potentially indispensable account of Shakespeare’s notoriously problematic play relocates the action to London and the heart of the East End during a shameful era of emboldened British anti-Semitism. And it’s a passion project like no other for its star."

"Her Mitteleuropean accent is strong, and striking. Her attitude – stern, not easily sympathetic – is equally arresting. Oberman dares you to dislike Shylock, even as it’s made clear she has good cause to despise those she’s asked to lend to."

"Given Oberman’s view, I’d love the work itself to be put even more squarely in the dock. And I also yearned for more of the period context to seep in... The show should feel confident about digging deeper, and taking its time. Oberman and co are on to something. This is potent. It could be peerless."

"Shylock battles the blackshirts of the East End" (Watford Palace Theatre)

"The director Brigid Larmour’s adaptation, based on an idea by Tracy-Ann Oberman — who also gives us a female Shylock — tackles Shakespeare’s troubling portrayal of Jews in uncompromising terms."

"It’s an invigorating production, even if it’s guilty of throwing too many ideas in the mix."

"Oberman’s Shylock is a defiant matriarch, a survivor of the shtetl who appears more isolated than ever in the trial scenes because of an undercurrent of misogyny."

"Antonio drips menace. Hannah Morrish’s Portia is even icier, a handmaiden to the master race dressed in silk."

"At this performance, the audience played its part too. In Larmour’s prologue, a communal prayer scene, several voices from the stalls responded to the invocations. Later, when Shylock is ordered to convert to Christianity, there were groans of distress from the auditorium. This production may have its flaws, but it speaks to us."

"Now Shylock’s an East End matriarch facing down fascists" (Watford Palace Theatre)

"Historical mis-match"

"In a radical new production of The Merchant Of Venice in Watford, this is a fascinating and timely reinvention of the Bard’s highly contentious, stereotypical Jewish character, played by Tracy-Ann Oberman (recently in Noises Off)."

"The new setting is certainly thought-provoking... Although heavily cut to run at two hours — including a 20-minute interval — Larmour’s adaptation remains very much Shakespeare."

"The problem with Larmour’s otherwise thoughtful and unsettling production is that she has turned it into a didactic polemic, with the posh merchant Antonio wearing a black shirt and Nazi armband. He’s a very one-dimensional baddie, whereas Shakespeare’s full text offers a sharper and more complex presentation of Shylock’s social evisceration."

"Oberman, however, is a very distinctive Shylock, performing with enormous pride and dignity in the face of rancid racism. She particularly relishes Shylock’s contemptuous put‑downs — investing them with righteous, guttural scorn."

"But there is little sense of the widespread resistance to fascism that defeated Mosley. For that, Larmour would have been better off with a play cut loose from all the baggage that comes with old Bill."