original music by Stephen M. Hunt

Shakespeare's play as you've never seen it.

For more than four centruries, Portia's triumph over Shylock has celebrated white, Protestant supremacy - The Merchant of Venice is a vehicle of malice.

  "..Fair Jessica shall be my torch-bearer.." Lorenzo, Act 2, sc. iv

Or she will, if she becomes a Christian. Later, her father's life is spared on conditioin that he too relinquishes the cultural inherritance that defines who he is.

But does an Elizabethan object lesson in racial humiliation and suppression belong in twenty first century theatre? If not, must we sideline a major Shakesperian work?

In this radical, controversial adaptation, the original text is preserved, reordered and delivered anew. The upshot is a revised moral that asserts the right to be of each race, creed and colour.