Theatrical Event
A play about money, justice, and antisemitism, starring Hannah Laszlo.
Shylock is a moneylender, a widow, a Jew. The wealthy antisemitic merchant Antonio borrows money from her on behalf of his beloved friend, who sets off in search of a rich wife.
As a private joke, Shylock sets one condition – if the sum isn’t repaid by a certain date, she has the right to cut a pound of flesh from Antonio’s body.
As time goes by, the joke turns deadly serious.
Shakespeare may have set out to write a comedy, but the shadow of the Jew – and of antisemitism – darkens the romance and the laughter.
Unlike his contemporaries, Shakespeare did not draw the Jewish character as a demonic caricature, but as a flesh-and-blood human being:
driven by passion, shaped by pain, full of contradictions, and, at times, even moving.
The current production relocates the story to Berlin, 1933 – one of the darkest, most terrifying times in the history of the modern world and of the Jewish people.