‘Is it antisemitic? Yes’: how Jewish actors and directors tackle The Merchant of Venice

Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Shylock, who has been relocated to 1930s Britain, is inspired by her tough great grandma – while Henry Goodman felt shame after losing himself in Shakespeare’s most notorious character

‘This play has always fascinated and repulsed me and I don’t like it. I’ve never liked it.” It’s rare for an actor promoting their latest project to express revulsion. But nothing is simple for Tracy-Ann Oberman, playing Shylock in her own adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. How do Jewish creatives approach English literature’s most notorious antisemitic archetype? Indeed, why return to the source of so many bloodthirsty, moneygrabbing slurs?

Oberman first encountered the play aged 12. “It was taught in my school, very badly. In the playground afterwards everybody was running around, rubbing their hands, doing a ‘Jewish’ voice. It was cringe-making.” Nothing she saw as an adult reassured her. “I’ve seen productions where Shylock is mocked. I’ve seen versions where he’s a complete victim. I don’t know which is worse.”

Oberman gradually reimagined Shylock as a tough-as-nails widow, informed by her own family history. At 15, her great-grandmother came to England from her Belarus shtetl. Widowhood left her “a tough single mother in London’s East End. She lived in two rooms in a tenement flat near Cable Street until she was 98.” Oberman recalls other indomitable aunties: Machine-gun Molly (“men were terrified of her”) and Sarah Portugal, who “smoked a pipe, wore a slash of red lipstick – everything that was anathema to the aristocratic English. The very thing that made them survivors also made them outsiders – too loud, too brash, too strong, too opinionated.”

It led her to set The Merchant in 1936, when the Jewish community in London’s East End was threatened by Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists. Antonio, the merchant who visits Shylock to secure a loan (penalty for defaulting: the infamous pound of flesh) is based on Mosley. Portia, who humiliates Shylock in court, is inspired by the aristocratic Mitford sisters. “There wasn’t a dictator the Mitfords didn’t love,” says Oberman, adding, “Portia is seen as the beautiful heroine but actually, she’s a fucking bitch. She destroys Shylock and doesn’t need to.”

Mosley’s blackshirts attacked Jewish people and property, preparing to march through the district on 4 October 1936. “The police were beating up Jews and antifascists, not protecting them,” Oberman explains. “My great-grandmother always reminded me that their neighbours – their Irish neighbours, the small African-Caribbean community, the dockers, the working classes – all stood together. In our time, when nefarious sources try to pit minorities against each other, I hope this play shows we’re stronger, prouder and safer together.”

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