Following a triumphant season at the Criterion Theatre and a sold-out UK tour, Tracy-Ann Oberman (EastEnders, Doctor Who, Friday Night Dinner), is back in the West End to reprise her starring role from as the first British actress to play Shylock in the critically acclaimed production of The Merchant of Venice 1936 from December this year.
Opening at the Trafalgar Theatre on 28 December, the limited season runs until 25 January. This important, groundbreaking production will then embark on a second UK tour for eight weeks visiting: Liverpool, Bath, Southend, Salford, Fareham, Leeds and Cardiff, culminating in Birmingham on 5 April 2025 – allowing audiences all over the UK the opportunity to experience this “deeply relevant” (Daily Telegraph) play.
Tracy-Ann Oberman said: “I am so delighted that, by popular demand, MOV1936 is coming back into the West End so soon after we finished. Demand has been so high that I feel bringing it back, and this time to the beautiful Trafalgar Theatre and then on a national tour, is essential. The message of my female Shylock – based on my Great Grandma, a widow in the East End standing up to Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, with all her neighbours and others horrified by the message of BUF – feels more pertinent than ever. The play is about unity, standing together against hatred and the play’s impact has been beyond my wildest hopes and ambitions for it.”
Ambition, power and political unrest explode onto the stage in this “striking and impactful” (The Guardian) production that “makes theatre history” (Daily Telegraph). This “fascinating and timely” (Daily Mail) reimagining sees Shakespeare’s classic transported to 1930s East London against the backdrop of the Battle of Cable Street. It is adapted by Brigid Larmour and Tracy-Ann Oberman.
With the city on the brink of political unrest, fascism sweeping across Europe and Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists threatening a paramilitary march through the Jewish East End, strong-willed single mother Shylock runs a pawnbroking business from her house in Cable Street where Mosley will march. When charismatic, antisemitic aristocrat Antonio comes to her for a loan, a high-stakes deal is struck. Will Shylock take her revenge, and who will pay the ultimate price?
