![]() Her Mitteleuropean accent is strong, and striking. ![]() The opening vignette creates a corresponding sense of sheltering from harm and seeking solidarity Oberman’s self-collected matriarch presides over the Passover Seder, lighting candles, saying prayers, the suggestion that of an old story of persecution being told once more. Period footage of rallies by Mosley’s British Union of Fascists achieves a haunting vandalism, daubing, in flickering newsreel light, a dark street frontage that conjures Shylock’s residence and a synagogue. ![]() Well-known for facing down anti-Semitism online, she has followed in their footsteps modern cables, same battle. She’s also honouring family history: her grandmother and great-grandmother witnessed the bloody 1936 Battle of Cable Street, in which the Jewish community and its allies thwarted a British blackshirts march. Working in creative consort with director Brigid Larmour, Tracy-Ann Oberman apparently makes theatre history as the first British actress to take on the lead. And it’s a passion project like no other for its star. 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. You could call The Merchant of Venice 1936 the “Oswald Mosley Merchant”.
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