Photos: First Look at THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 1936 at Watford Palace Theatre

Leading actor and writer Tracy-Ann Oberman will reinvent the role of Shylock in the hotly anticipated production directed by Brigid Larmour, Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Watford Palace Theatre. The production shines a light on an earlier dark chapter in our history, the growth of a British Fascist party in the 1930s, and the East End community coming together to stop them in the Battle of Cable Street on 4 October 1936.

Check out photos below!

Joining Tracy-Ann Oberman, Hannah Morrish plays Portia - an award-winning Shakespearean actress, Hannah is perhaps best known for her Octavia in Antony and Cleopatra at the National Theatre and her Lavinia in Titus Andronicus at the RSC. She was involved in workshop development of the project at the RSC earlier this year with Raymond Coulthard, who also joins the production as Antonio, his numerous television credits include regulars in Mr Selfridge and Hotel Babylon as well as an extensive career on the stage at the RSC, National Theatre, Donmar Warehouse amongst numerous others.

By presenting Shylock as a woman and placing the action in London in 1936 this production offers a rare and vivid insight into a dark chapter in our history, all too relevant to Britain today. Fascism is sweeping across Europe, and Oswald Mosley's British Union of Fascists threatens a paramilitary march through the Jewish East End. Shylock, a widowed survivor of anti-Semitic pogroms in Russia, hopes to give her daughter Jessica a better life. She runs a pawnbroking business from her house in Cable Street where Mosley will march. Charismatic heroine Portia and the Merchant himself, Antonio, are aristocratic Mosleyites, their playground is piano bars at the Ritz, bias cut silk gowns, white tie and tails. It's a vivid evocation of our history, and a warning for our times.

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