Ethan McSweeny Directs The Merchant of Venice

The Shakespeare Theatre Company closes the 2010-2011 Season with Ethan McSweeny directing Shakespeare's tragicomedy The Merchant of Venice. The production will run from June 21 - July 24, 2011 on the company's Sidney Harman Hall stage (610 F Street NW).

Whether contemplating the contents of gilded chests or the darkest corners of human nature, The Merchant of Venice challenges audiences to look beyond misleading appearances to find the true measure of things. An intriguing story of power and revenge, justice and mercy, true love and duplicity, The Merchant of Venice features some of Shakespeare's most complex and memorable characters.

Ethan McSweeny embarks on his first Shakespeare play for STC and creates an urban world where everything is commodified. "After directing plays by Aeschylus, Euripides and Shaw for STC, it's exciting to finally work with the house playwright," says McSweeny. In searching for a setting analogous to Shakespeare's polyglot, commerce-driven Venice, McSweeny and his design team discovered resonances in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in the late 1920s. Set against the economically enforced cultural changes and struggles of the period, the play references the vitality of commerce and power during economic downturns, past and present. McSweeny explains, "When there are fewer crumbs for us to fight over, we are more tempted to fight over them in ways that poison us and make us think about ourselves as separate groups, and the fastest way to do that is to define the other by race or religion (or both). Instead of a story about a hegemonic group oppressing a minority, with this setting we can tell a story that is about two ethnic groups, Jews and Italians, fighting one another to become enfranchised in the American marketplace."

For tickets and more information, please call 202.547.1122 or visit ShakespeareTheatre.org.