Merchant of Venice star Tracy-Ann Oberman on how Liverpool fought fascism
In The Merchant of Venice 1936, which arrives at the Liverpool Playhouse next week, Tracy-Ann Oberman plays Shylock as a steely Jewish matriarch facing down the fascists in 1930s London.
But it wasn’t only London's East End – famously at Cable Street, where Oberman's family were involved in the resistance – which stood up to Sir Oswald Mosley and his violent Blackshirts.
While Mosley’s anti-Semitic message attracted plenty of sympathisers up and down the country in the interwar years (at one point the party claimed to have 50,000 members), there were also protests against him and his British Union of Fascists. Including in Liverpool.
“It means so much to me to bring this production up here,” says Oberman ahead of the show arriving at the Playhouse on Tuesday.
“Oswald Mosley came up to Liverpool in 1937 to hold a rally whipping up hatred against the Jews of Liverpool and other working class and immigrant communities.
“Liverpool threw him out, very roundly, and this play will celebrate everything about ordinary heroes standing up to fascism - but using the words of Shakespeare.”
‘Very roundly’ is one way of describing the events of Sunday, October 10 1937.
Mosley’s British Union of Fascists had announced it planned to hold an afternoon meeting at Queens Drive in Walton, and a second one later in the day at Birkenhead Park.
Thousands of people converged on a piece of waste ground at Walton to hear Mosley. Already there were about 1,000 members of the Communist Party and others who were having a meeting when the British Union of Fascists turned up. Around 100 police were also in attendance.
Fascist supporters attempting to speak from the top of a van equipped with a Tannoy system were heckled, booed and showered with missiles – and when Mosley clambered up he didn’t even have time to open his mouth before he was felled by a large stone which struck him on the left temple.
Mosley spent six days in Walton Hospital with a head wound and concussion, and 14 people, including two women, ended up in the Liverpool Police Court accused of various offences connected with the affray.
One of them, 19-year-old Walton labourer George Olsen Melander, was accused of throwing the missile which injured Mosley.
Above: The Merchant of Venice 1936. Top: Tracy-Ann Oberman as Shylock. Photo by Marc Brenner.
In The Merchant of Venice 1936, Oberman’s Shylock discovers that the ‘quality of mercy’ is indeed strained. But what of Melander?
At his trial at the Manchester Assizes in December 1937 he was defended by young Wirral-born barrister called Selwyn Lloyd (later to become a famous Conservative politician, holding posts including Foreign Secretary, Chancellor of the Exchequer and Speaker of the House of Commons) and was found not guilty of wounding with intent.
Meanwhile the jury was split on a second charge of inflicting grievous bodily harm. Then when Melander was retried on that charge at Liverpool two months later the prosecution offered no evidence, and the case was dismissed.
The same day, Melander appeared at Liverpool Police Court, represented this time by Labour MP Sydney Silverman, where again the prosecution offered no evidence on two standing charges (possession of an offensive weapon at a public meeting and behaving in a disorderly manner) and they were withdrawn, leaving him to walk free for the second time in a few hours.
As for Mosley? While at the time the attack on him was condemned by many, including as an attack on free speech, in May 1940 - with Britain fighting for its survival - he was imprisoned, and his Fascist party was banned.
Above: The Merchant of Venice 1936 is at the Liverpool Playhouse
Back to Shakespeare, this reworked version of his problematic and uncomfortable ‘comedy’ – in which Shylock appears as a female East End pawnbroker - was due to be staged in Liverpool in September 2020, with the Everyman and Playhouse one of five co-producers.
But Covid intervened, and it finally arrives at the Playhouse in a touring version of a Watford Palace and Manchester’s HOME production.
The production has evidently struck a chord with both critics and audiences.
“We’ve had lots of people crying, and we get standing ovations,” says Oberman in an interview for the show. “While they might not have liked my Shylock, they certainly understood why she wants that pound of flesh.
“She stands in the courtroom with her handbag, with everything stacked against her. A lot of people know that feeling – believing the law is on their side, but discovering it's only on the side of people that have power.”
Oberman, whose Three Sisters on Hope Street was staged at the Everyman in Capital of Culture year, adds: “My dream is that the battle of Cable Street will be taught as part of the British civil rights movement.
"Mosley had been sending his Blackshirts down into Cable Street smashing doors, breaking windows, attacking synagogues and people on the streets, putting up the most horrific leaflets straight out of Hitler's playbook.
“But my great-grandmother always reminded me that their neighbours – their Irish neighbours, the Afro-Caribbean community, the dockers, the working classes – all stood together. That was a beautiful moment.”
The Merchant of Venice 1936 is at the Liverpool Playhouse from February 4-8. Ticket availability HERE
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