Casting Announced For Shakespeare In Italy's A MERCHANT OF VENICE at The Playground Theatre

Mary Chater, Alexander Knox, John McAndrew, Lena Robin, Peter Tate and Alex Wilson will star inShakespeare in Italy's new six-character version of one of William Shakespeare's most notable and controversial tales, The Merchant of Venice.

Bill Alexander, the critically acclaimed and award-winning Shakespearian director, well known for his tenures at the RSC and Birmingham Rep, and his Best Director Olivier Award for The Merry Wives of Windsor, has created and will direct this all-new modern-day adaptation, entitled A Merchant of Venice.

Bill's adaptation focuses on the tortured nature of love at the inner core of Shakespeare's play, and features set and costume designs by Sara Perks, lighting by Ryan Day and sound by Sarah Sayeed.

The production runs at The Playground Theatre from 10 November - 4 December 2021, with press night on Monday 15 November.

Bill Alexander, adaptor and director of A Merchant of Venice said, "One can get obsessed with a particular work of art and I confess that obsession is the only way to describe my relationship to The Merchant of Venice.

I have directed it twice professionally, twice at drama schools, and taught and lectured on it often. When working on select scenes, it began to occur to me that there was an inner play about a small network of relationships that was the core of the bigger play that wrestles with huge themes of Justice and Mercy, Marriage and Money, Race and Class, and it is this inner core, essentially about the tortured nature of Love, that my production for Shakespeare in Italy at The Playground Theatre will focus on.

My version of the play, entitled A Merchant of Venice, focuses on just six key characters whose entangled loves, desires and fortunes hinge on a better understanding of themselves and their relation to each other in the blackly comic world of a modern Venice, the sublime and terrible Serenissima."

Shakespeare in Italy is keen to take the works of Shakespeare to new audiences in exciting and interesting ways. Parallel to this production is its Outreach Programme for Schools sponsored by BMH Associates Limited. Working with students at The St Marylebone CofE School, who are studying The Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare in Italy hopes to enrich their understanding of the play via a series of energetic and interactive workshops with members of the cast and visits to see the performance.