Interview: Shaul Bassi discusses the mock appeal to be heard alongside Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, which is being performed in the Venice Ghetto for the first time

In July, as Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is performed in the Venice Ghetto for the very first time, a trial featuring advocates for Shylock, Antonio and Portia will take place in Venice’s Scuola Grande di San Rocco. Will it overturn the verdict from the play, in which Shylock is tried, found guilty of threatening the life of a Venetian, and then fined and forced to convert to Christianity? Shaul Bassi, director of Beit Venezia: A Home for Jewish Culture, and one of the movers behind the city’s Jewish cultural events this year, reveals his side of the story.

"It is more accurately a mock appeal," explains Bassi. "A wonderful companion piece to the production. And it’s to be held in one of the most prestigious and breathakingly beautiful venues in Venice, the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, almost entirely decorated by Tintoretto.

We’re not going to see the play’s characters. It is a mock appeal, so we’re going to have three advocates for Shylock, Antonio and Portia. Each will present a case for Shylock, Antonio with the Republic of Venice and Portia.They will try to persuade a jury of five real judges that they should reverse or confirm the verdict of the trial in the play. It’s a kind of legal sequel."

The verdict of the play could be overturned. How does Portia come to be represented?

"The idea was to keep Antonio and Shylock as the plaintiff and defendant, but one of the lawyers working on the project said there’s a case to be made that the whole legal procedure of the play was illegal because Portia was practising the law without a licence. That adds to the fun."

Who is the presiding judge?

"Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, a legal eagle and public icon for human and civil rights in the States and beyond. We’re privileged to have her offering a contemporary dimension to our discussion.

There’s no Jewish majority in the jury. Everyone is coming here with the idea of being even-handed, but also to do their best to help the audience see al the legal and ethical implications of the play from all possible angles."

You’re also going to share what you’ve found out about Venetian merchants and the law in Shakespeare’s time…

"We’re going to have a small presentation on arbitration in early modern Venice – at that time it wasn’t a good idea to go to trial. Merchants went out of their way not to go to trial when they had a dispute to settle! They would try to resort to arbitration and the funny thing I’ve learned is that there was even a verb ‘palazzare’ which meant to go to the Palazzo Ducale for trial, which was the one thing they wanted to avoid at all possible cost."

The line up of internationally famous guests contributing to the evening doesn’t stop with Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg, doesn't it?

"We’re going to be blessed with the presence of actor F Murray Abraham, a celebrated Shylock in the United States. He is not part of the production but of the documentary series Shakespeare Uncovered, so he’s going to lead discussion on  certain aspects of the play and  read out extracts. And we’re also blessed with the presence of two of the most brilliant Shakespeare scholars, James Shapiro, who wrote Shakespeare and the Jews; and Stephen Greenblatt, who has really changed the history of Shakespeare criticism."

So how will they fit into the evening?

"Each will give a little speech on the play and the three lawyers will present their case for 15-20 minutes each with questions and answers from the jury and finally we’re going to find out what’s going to happen because there’s no script. We have a structure but there’s no forgone conclusion.

All this (the trial alongside the performances of The Merchant of Venice) would not be possible without these people who really understand the uniqueness of of this moment 500 years since the creation of the Ghetto, 400 years since Shakespeare’s death. It’s an amazing coincidence, which we also wanted to use to reflect. Talking about today, it’s also about the role of foreigners in any society – the extent you’re prepared to change society to accommodate them, to expel them once they become a disturbing presence – it’s a very topical play."

How can we watch the proceedings?

"Tickets are understandably limited, but we’re going to film it."

What is your role in the production of The Merchant of Venice, as well as the events surrounding it?

"I am Associate Professor of English Literature at Ca’ Foscari University and this production and concept was conceived at the university. This very fruitful collaboration between our university and Compagnia de’ Colombari, an international theatre company, is not an academic production. It’s multi ethnic (it includes American, British, Croatian, French,  Indian and  Italian actors) and colour blind and to some extent gender blind. And people have brought their legal knowledge to the table. first and foremost Justice Ginsberg, so it’s a great collaborative project. It’s also winner of a Creative Europe project that included two British Universities, Queen Mary College London and Warwick University and the programme Global Shakespeare. We’ve been working together to show how Shakespeare is relevant throughout Europe."

What will be the legacy of these extraordinary events?

"We’re going to turn all the artistic material, the outcomes of both the trial and the production into educational material. The main goal for dissemination of the project will become a resource for people interested in the play that we’ve called the Shylock Encyclopedia. It will be online and the idea is that it’s really accessible to everybody and maybe it will also be a sort of open encyclopedia that one can add posts to. We want to put everything at the disposal of students, scholars, actors and directors, whoever wants to deal with this most controversial of plays for years to come."

By Judi Herman

Find more interviews with members of the Venice Ghetto production of The Merchant of Venice on JR OutLoud. Or visit www.themerchantinvenice.org for further info.

JR OutLoud: Table tennis champ Jeff Ingber talks about travelling the world playing the beautiful game

Jeff Ingber, table tennis champion for decades from the mid-20th century and one of Howard Jacobson's heroes, met up with JR's arts editor Judi Herman at the exhibition Chess in Shorts that accompanies the production of the Mighty Walzer at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre. Ingber told Judi about playing the other beautiful game in Manchester and how it was his passport to travel the world, from Israel to China.

Chess in Shorts, an exhibition by Howard Jacobson and Manchester Jewish Museum, runs until Saturday 30 July, FREE, at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, M2 7DH. www.royalexchange.co.uk

The Mighty Walzer runs until Saturday 30 July, 7.30pm & 2.30pm, £8-£16, at Royal Exchange Theatre.

Read our review of The Mighty Walzer and our interview with the show's playwright and actor, Simon Bent and Elliot Levey.

JR OutLoud: Davina Moss talks to JR about her role in the production they're calling The Merchant in Venice at Venice Ghetto 500

An update from Italy: Davina Moss writes:

"Rehearsals are going well! We’ve gone from table work to staging and it’s important to figure out the geometry of the space. Everyone is very excited with how the project is progressing and we’re making some very cool discoveries in the rehearsal room. In this photograph you see us debating over a line in the trial scene, which different versions of the play have different wordings for."

As the celebrations to mark the 500th anniversary of the Venice Ghetto continue, excitement mounts over the first ever performances of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice in the Ghetto itself (26-31 July). In the next of a series of interviews with members of the cast and creative team, JR's arts editor Judi Herman talks to Londoner Davina Moss, currently studying dramaturgy at university in New York, to find out more about her role as assistant dramaturg on this unique production.

Visit www.themerchantinvenice.org for more info.

Interview: Playwright Simon Bent and actor Elliot Levey talk life in Manchester and bringing Howard Jacobson’s comic novel The Mighty Walzer to the stage

“It became a very exotic place for me.” Simon Bent is talking about the Manchester of the 1950s, the setting of Howard Jacobson’s mighty tale of table tennis, teenage angst and Jewish family life. “What attracted me to the book is that it’s about a particular culture at a particular time which is gone. Part of the book is about the loss of that Manchester. It was Howard’s attempt to ‘get down’ that world before it got lost.”

So how has the playwright approached the equally mighty task of bringing Jacobson’s erstwhile Manchester to the stage?

In the novel, the eponymous Oliver Walzer looks back on his teenage days growing up in houseful of aunties, run by his complicated mother and dominated noisily by his larger-than-life father, a salesman of ‘swag’, chachkas (Yiddish for cheap trinkets), and anything he can sell off the back of his van. Bright and bookish Oliver’s great escape is table tennis, a game where he can become first among equals: that is, other nerdy teenage Jewish boys equally obsessed with their indoor sport – and sexual yearnings.

“The clear through line is Ollie, sometime in the future, remembering his past – the pull between the grandiose ambitions of his father and the more reserved character of his mother. The grip of his family is something he struggles to escape from. The story is about his awakening through ping pong and adolescence through to leaving home.”

Leeds-born actor Elliot Levey says he found his alter ego in Ollie when he first read the novel in 1999. “I fell in love, someone had written my life! Rereading it now, significantly older, I realised what I once thought was a coming-of-age story is actually a mid-life crisis story dressed up as a coming-of-age story. It’s about a man who’s spent his life rejecting the world he came from. Then he goes back home and suddenly realises all his life he’s been sitting on a rich seam of joy and love and something he’s always been searching for.”

In the book, narrator Ollie takes readers into his confidence. “Jacobson is such a nimble writer,” says Bent. “He suddenly goes from being light comedic to quite serious. It’s been a challenge to capture that on stage.” So between the slices of action, Bent has Ollie talk to the audience. “He poses a question to his chums in the audience who are our psyche – “Why am I? Where I am?” And he conjures up his mum and dad and people from his past. The thing that cracks it open is the chance of going back, not reliving it as you were, but reliving it as you are.”

Bent and director Jonathan Humphreys are not Jewish. “It means I’m not caught in it. I can look at it from the outside,” says Bent. But Levey is terrified of being too Jewish and turning off an audience. “I don’t want to launder in public. I know Howard has felt that way. So it’s terrific to have two of the prime creative forces in the ring who sense what it’s like when they are being alienated – or more often than not, they are excited and curious by something which most Jews in the room think is commonplace, because we’ve grown up with those sorts of arguments, that sort of language.”

Part of that language is the Yiddish that peppers the novel. “We’ve kept some in and removed other bits. This was a note from Howard actually – he was keen for it not to become stereotypical,” says Bent. “I don’t mind words I don’t know coming up because I get the meaning from the context. But it’s a balancing act. The characters speak with Manchester accents, then constantly speak with Yiddishisms. They slip in and out of them. It’s like the two cultures coming together.”

The almost entirely Jewish cast includes Tracy-Ann Oberman as matriarch Sadie and Jonathan Tafler as dad Joel, and some actors actually from the North West, so those accents should be authentic. “There’s a surfeit of Jews in the cast,” laughs Levey. ”One of the things that makes that joyous, is that you are not the ‘Jew in the room’. Because it’s about a Jewish family, and most of the characters are Jews, it makes you free. It’s about growing up, about mid-life, not about Jews.”

Half the cast of ten play Oliver’s Maccabi teammates, table-tennis nerds to a man, as Levey says, “these utter nerds playing the nerdiest of nerdy sports. The upper echelons of table tennis were Mittel and Eastern European Jews, Hungarians, Czechs. Howard said that in the 1950s, there were not many Jewish sporting heroes and suddenly there were these guys with slicked back hair, baggy trousers, looking great and these nerdy Jewish kids could identify with them.”

So will we see the strokes, hear the sound of bat on ball? The cast is being coached by David Hulme, Stockport Federation’s Head Coach and Levey hints that there might be a game at the end. “We’ve got a table tennis table in the rehearsal room, we’re playing nonstop. We’ve set up a little tournament. There are going to be tables outside the theatre,” he says.

I ask the duo about the lusty adolescent desires depicted in the book: Oliver drools after gorgeous blonde table tennis player Lorna Peachley. Is the play suitable for today’s 13-year-olds?

Levey, who has three sons around that age, is confident it is. “My youngest is 10 and this is perfect for him, partly because it looks at what it was to be a kid at a time perceived to be more innocent. And [it shows] what happens to young boys when sex is repressed… it becomes something that fuels his ping pong.”

Finally what does Jacobson think of it? “When I began the adaptation, I deliberately didn’t meet Howard,” says Bent. I left it till after he’d read the first draft. He had a few suggestions which were good, and I incorporated them. He came to the first day of rehearsal and the read through. He was quite pleased, I think.”

By Judi Herman

The Mighty Walzer runs until Saturday 30 July, 7.30pm & 2.30pm, £8-£16, at Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester, M2 7DH. www.royalexchange.co.uk 

The Mighty Walzer Walking Tour runs Sunday 17 - Thursday 28 July, 10.30am, £7, at Manchester Jewish Museum, M8 8LW; 084 3208 0500. www.manchesterjewishmuseum.com

Read our review of The Mighty Walzer and listen to our podcast with table tennis champion Jeff Ingber.

JR OutLoud: In light of Venice Ghetto 500, actor Michelle Uranowitz talks to JR about playing Shylock's daughter as part of the anniversary celebrations

As the celebrations to mark the 500th anniversary of the Venice Ghetto continue, excitement mounts over the first ever performances of Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in the Ghetto itself (26-31 July). JR's arts editor Judi Herman will be talking to various members of the cast and creative team in the coming weeks, but first spoke to American actor Michelle Uranowitz about playing Shylock's rebellious daughter Jessica in Venice.

Visit www.themerchantinvenice.org for more info.

JR OutLoud: A guided tour of the Jewish Museum's exhibition Moses, Mods and Mr Fish

An audio tour of the London Jewish Museum's new exhibition, Moses, Mods and Mr Fish: The Menswear Revolution, charting the emergence of the modern male wardrobe. Join Judi Herman on an exclusive journey guided by curator Elizabeth Selby from the tailoring workshops of the mid-19th century to the boutique revolution and mod culture of the Swinging ‘60s. The exhibition tells the story through the huge number of Jewish companies at the forefront of the major developments and changes in the design, manufacturing and retail of men’s clothing from the mid-19th to late-20th century. Among the highlights are the clothes themselves – including the brown suede jacket worn by John Lennon during the recording of The Beatles' 1963 album, With the Beatles. Judi rounds off her visit by sharing a rather special early ad for Moses and Son Menswear.

Moses, Mods and Mr Fish: The Menswear Revolution runs until 19 June at Jewish Museum, 129-131 Albert St, NW1 7NB; 020 7284 7384. www.jewishmuseum.org.uk

JR OutLoud: Dana Ivgy chats to JR's arts editor Judi Herman about her role in Next to Her

Israeli actress Dana Ivgy chats to JR's arts editor Judi Herman about her role in Asaf Korman's drama Next to Her. This powerful, challenging film – with a script by Korman's wife Liron Ben-Shlush – explores the symbiotic relationship between Chelli (played by Ben-Shlush) and her mentally-challenged sister Gabby (Ivgy), for whom she is the sole carer. One day she is forced to hand Gabby over to a daycare centre part-time, which is when a relationship of another kind develops with Zohar (Yaakov Zada Daniel) the new gym teacher at the school where she works. Ben-Shlush based this story on her own experience of having a mentally disabled sister and worked closely with friend and co-star Dana Ivgy on her role.

Next to Her can be watched on BFI Player for £6 or at the following screenings:

Friday 25 - Wednesday 30 March, times vary, £7.50, at MAC Birmingham, B12 9QH; 0121 446 3232. https://macbirmingham.co.uk

Sunday 20 March, 8pm, £8.50, at Glasgow Film Theatre, G3 6RB; 0141 332 6535. www.glasgowfilm.org/theatre

Read our ★★★★ review of Next to Her

JR OutLoud: Diane Samuels talks about her play Poppy + George and her new oratorio Song of Dina

Liverpudlian playwright Diane Samuels talks to Judi Herman about identity and change from London's East End 1919 to now. These themes feature in her play Poppy + George, about Northerner Poppy Wright, who is taken on at a tailoring workshop by the proprietor Smith, a Russian Jew with a Chinese past. It's here that Poppy also meets Tommy the music hall artist and George the chauffeur, both changed by serving in the trenches.

Diane also discusses her new project (at 21:49), Song of Dina, a multimedia oratorio with music by composer Maurice Chernick, based on the story of the Patriarch Jacob’s only daughter.

Poppy + George runs to Saturday 27 February, 7.30pm & 2.30pm, £12-£22.50, at Watford Palace Theatre, 20 Clarendon Rd, WD17 1JZ; 01923 225671. http://watfordpalacetheatre.co.uk

Song of Dina launch event on Wednesday 6 April, 7.45pm, FREE, at JW3, 341-351 Finchley Rd, NW3 6ET; 020 7433 8989. www.jw3.org.uk

Read JR's four-star review of Poppy + George

Interview: Josh Bradlow from Stonewall shares his story for LGBT History Month

Whilst we're in the midst of LGBT History Month, Josh Bradlow shares his experiences of coming of age as a gay Jewish man, from his 'mortifying' Bar Mitzvah, to his current work as a policy intern at LGBT equality charity Stonewall. 

"Of the many embarrassing moments I had throughout my teenage years, one in particular stands out for me. On a sweltering June afternoon in a crowded Lebanese restaurant, a relative addressed my Bar Mitzvah party. ‘Josh probably wouldn’t want you to know this’, he said, ‘but his favourite film is Miss Congeniality’. The audience erupted in gales of laughter, and I was mortified.

"It might strike some people as confusing as to why I found this so embarrassing. Anyone who knows me these days will know that I carry precisely no shame about my love for Miss Congeniality (and to a lesser extent, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous). But at that moment, hours after I had supposedly ‘become a man’ in the synagogue,  I felt that I’d been exposed as being ‘unmanly’, and back then that felt like a serious problem.

"By that point I’d been trying to ‘pray the gay away’ for two years, and to say that I was unhappy with my sexuality would be an understatement. At the same time, I was navigating the difficulties that come with being one of a handful of Jews in a school where anti-Semitism was almost as common as homophobia.

"Whilst I was spared the worst of the bullying, I still received my fair share of holocaust jokes, and I was left with the feeling that I didn’t belong.

"I coped by hiding my sexuality and pouring myself into my academic work. Although I was dogged by a lingering sense of shame and a constant fear of exposure, I managed to achieve a kind of balance between my external and internal lives, and I enjoyed a lot of my teenage years.

"And gradually, over time, things began to change. I started to see public figures – including gay Jews like Stephen Fry and Simon Amstell – whose experiences and identities I could relate to. I began to surround myself with more queer influences, from Queer as Folk to the Velvet Underground, which affirmed my sense of who I was. And as I left school and moved into the mixed, more liberal environment of university I began to reconcile myself with the fact that I wasn’t getting any straighter, and I came out in my second year of university.

"In the years since coming out I’ve been extremely well supported by my family and friends, many of whom are Jewish. Whilst it’s certainly not been easy to face up to the shame that I’ve carried about my identity, I feel increasingly proud to be part of two overlapping communities with rich histories of resilience, survival and creativity in the face of oppression. And I feel proud to be part of a religious community which is increasingly accepting and affirming its LGBT members.

"But not everyone in our community has been as fortunate as I’ve been. I think we need more visible LGBT role models and allies to demonstrate that it is possible to be both Jewish and LGBT, and to show all members of our community that LGBT people should be accepted for who they are. Judaism is a religion which sees discussion and debate as not simply a means to an end but an end in itself; we need to broaden the debate to ensure that all of our voices are heard in our community today."

Josh lives in London and is a policy intern to the CEO of lesbian, gay, bi and trans equality charity Stonewall.

You can support Stonewall’s work by donating, fundraising, attending their events, sharing their campaigns on social networks or by taking part in a Stonewall Challenge. Find out more information at www.stonewall.org.uk.

JR OutLoud: Judi Herman speaks to the brains behind the musical retelling of the real-life riches to rags story, Grey Gardens

Photo © Scott Rylander

In the mid-1970s Albert and David Maysles – first-generation sons of Jewish immigrants to the US from Eastern Europe – made Grey Gardens, one of their most famous films. The documentary told the story of a mother and daughter from the highest echelons of US Society, Edith and Edie Bouvier Beale, who were the aunt and cousin of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The two Bouvier Beale women were discovered living as reclusive social outcasts in Grey Gardens, a dilapidated mansion overrun by cats that was so squalid the Health Department deemed it “unfit for human habitation”.

Now another creative Jewish pair, composer Scott Frankel and lyricist Michael Korie, together with book writer Doug Wright, have brought their multi-award-winning musical based on the film to London. JR’s arts editor Judi Herman, who saw Thom Southerland’s European premiere starring Sheila Hancock and Jenna Russell, was enchanted by this riches to rags story, as you’ll hear in her interview with the three writers.

Grey Gardens runs until Saturday 6 February, 7.30pm & 3pm, £25, £20 concs, at Southwark Playhouse, 77-85 Newington Causeway, SE1 6BD; 020 7407 0234. www.southwarkplayhouse.co.uk

Watch the cult documentary Grey Gardens in full below:

See Jenna Russell sing Another Winter in a Summer Town from the musical: