The Merchant of Venice
About this Event
Entity Theatre returns to Westpark with William Shakespeare’s comedy The Merchant of Venice, directed by Conny Loder and John Yates, and produced by Ken Lawler and Peter Heinz.
Performances will take place at the Theatron, Westpark on 4th-6th, 11th-13th and 18-20th July 2025 at 19:00h (nearest Ubahn station: Holzapfelkreuth, U6, 15-minute-walk). All performances are in English. Admission is free, donations welcome.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAFeXoekkaI?si=WEaPpkQ9lTIHW6xn
About the play
Shakespeare's dark comedy The Merchant of Venice, written between 1596 and 1598, draws on various Italian and English sources referencing the casket story and the long-standing motif of the bond of flesh. Following anti-Jewish sentiment in 1594, the play addresses the case of Ruy Lopez, a Portuguese Jew and physician to Queen Elizabeth I, who was executed for attempting to murder the Queen. As Christopher Marlowe’s antisemitic play The Jew of Malta was being revived during Lopez’s trial, it was assumed that Shakespeare had written his own antisemitic play in an attempt to emulate Marlowe’s success. However, unlike Barabbas in Marlowe's play, Shakespeare's Jewish protagonist, Shylock, is portrayed as a human being who struggles with prejudice and discrimination.
The setting of Venice would have been familiar to Shakespeare’s audience as a major European trading city that offered equality to all its citizens, including minorities such as the Jewish community – a situation that was clearly not replicated in Shakespeare’s England. Nevertheless, Shakespeare depicts the Venetian community as flawed, portraying Christian hypocrisy, greed, and antisemitic stereotypes.
The title character, Antonio, and the legal bond whereby Shylock can claim a pound of Antonio’s flesh if the debt is not repaid provide the framework for the play's romantic elements: love and friendship triumph, and a miracle—Portia dressing as a man—intervenes to save the merchant from certain death. Alongside the fairy-tale motif of the male hero having to prove, his worth to his future wife by selecting the correct casket, these elements stem directly from Ser Giovanni Fiorentino’s novella collection, Il Pecorone (c. 1558).
Entity's production of The Merchant of Venice is set in a light-hearted, post-fascist 1950s Venice that is bustling with economic recovery and a desire to begin a new era. Meanwhile, the play's tragic undertones, its exploration of mercy versus justice and the prejudices faced by minorities such as Shylock resonate with ongoing struggles for equality and human rights today. The play encourages us to consider the moral consequences of revenge and the importance of empathy in resolving conflicts, as well as the ongoing battle against discrimination—issues that remain as relevant today as they were in the 1950s and in Shakespeare’s own time.
| Ticket Information | Ticket Price |
|---|---|
| Free Admission | Free |
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