Casting announced for Shakespeare in Italy’s A MERCHANT OF VENICE at the Playground Theatre

Full casting has been announced today for Shakespeare in Italy’s new six-character version of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, running at the Playground Theatre from 10 November-4 December.

Created and directed by Bill Alexander, this all-new modern-day adaptation - entitled A Merchant of Venice - will star Mary Chater, Alexander Knox, John McAndrew, Lena Robin, Peter Tate and Alex Wilson.

The production focuses on the tortured nature of love at the inner core of Shakespeare’s play, and features set and costume design by Sara Perks, lighting by Ryan Day and sound by Sarah Sayeed. 

Bill Alexander 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.” 

For more information and to book tickets, please click here.