OPINION: Why is antisemitism filling London’s theatres?
Hatred aimed at Jewish people has become a box office sensation
Antisemitism is quite the attraction in London’s theatres right now. At the Trafalgar Theatre, Tracy-Ann Oberman’s Merchant of Venice 1936, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s original that places the story’s antisemitic themes centre-stage, is playing to packed houses. Just up the road, the box office at the Harold Pinter Theatre is doing a roaring trade in advance ticket sales for Giant, a play that focuses on the hateful personal rantings of celebrated children’s author Roald Dahl.
Meanwhile, five minutes away from the Trafalgar on London’s Embankment, the Kit Kat Club (formerly the Playhouse Theatre) is ushering its star-billed take on Cabaret into its fourth year, and taking a look across the Thames to the Menier Chocolate Factory, the run of Mel Brooks’ musical The Producers is entirely sold out. And that shortlist does not even include the National Theatre’s award-winning The Lehman Trilogy that has just finished its fourth London run and which, it has been argued, is itself an antisemitic trope hiding in plain sight.
Cabaret, of course, is an inspired collaboration by Kander & Ebb that takes Christopher Isherwood’s essays on the collapse of Germany’s Weimar Republic, and transforms them into a show in which the increasingly parlous and doomed existence of Berlin’s Jews provides the mood music to the Kit Kat Club’s decadent decline. Giant, albeit brilliantly performed with John Lithgow turning in an Olivier-worthy turn as Dahl, offers little more than a platform for some of the author’s most hateful utterances.
Around the turn of this century, the Monty Python troupe famously wrote the lyric: “You won’t succeed on Broadway if you don’t have any Jews”. That lyric, it appears, could easily be amended and with some justification, to “you won’t succeed in theatre if you don’t hate any Jews”, for aside from Brooks’ brilliant and merciless send-up of Nazi Germany, the other three productions have at their hearts strong themes of contempt, with tickets selling fast.
So, what is it about witnessing hatred aimed at Jews that makes for such a box office draw? I discussed this question with a number of leading theatre makers.
Henry Goodman, an Olivier-winning Shylock in Trevor Nunn’s 2020 Merchant of Venice at the National, commented to me that in our predominantly rational and progressive society, audiences really enjoy and are released of deep tension by participating in a thought dialogue (ie not simply just watching the play) while at the theatre.
Was William Shakespeare right all along in recognising the entertainment value of Jewish suffering?
Goodman notes that antisemitism is a very deeply rooted tectonic plate in social life. He suggests that there is a sense in theatre-going people that may seem them think to themselves: “I’m not like that but I keep being swayed by emotions I have no control over – thank heavens that this play is an intellectual or emotional valve that may even be funny, releasing pressures in my head to open myself to its argument or to resist its temptations.”
Oberman herself argues that the torment of the Jews is the archetype of suffering, with audiences who may not really understand antisemitism and its impact, queuing up to see what that hatred looks like up-close.
Eilene Davidson, an accomplished producer on both sides of the pond, echoes Oberman, suggesting that the box office draw of antisemitism is that it allows audiences who may not necessarily understand the complexity of history’s hatred of the Jews, to see it first hand. Davidson went on to comment that, in her opinion, the antisemitism manifest globally today is at a depth of volume and hatred not seen since the horrors of the 1930s
But stepping back, and perhaps in the simplest of analyses, was William Shakespeare right all along in recognising the entertainment value of Jewish suffering?
In the overall context of The (original) Merchant of Venice, the fate of Shylock’s Jewish moneylender is little more than a sub-plot that has allowed Bassanio to woo the fair Portia and achieve the happiest of endings in a bucolic Belmont. Shakespeare removed Shylock from the play in act four (of five), never to be seen or heard from again.
Perhaps much like the audience’s delight in seeing the villain killed in a classic fairytale, Shakespeare will have known that seeing Shylock stripped of his family, his fortune and his faith will have provided much mirth to the Globe Theatre’s 16th century groundlings.
While The Merchant of Venice may today be recognised as one of the canon’s more tragically problematic plays, never forget that it actually remains one of Shakespeare’s most famous comedies. Is the joke on us?
- Jonathan Baz is a theatre critic and broadcaster.
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