Touring to the Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland: The Merchant of Venice

Description

The Shakespeare Exchange

The Shakespeare Exchange is the exchange of two productions between Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, and Theatre for a New Audience (TFANA), New York. In the spring of 2024, The Lyceum’s Macbeth (an undoing), written and directed by Zinnie Harris, after William Shakespeare, played at Polonsky Shakespeare Center, TFANA’s home. In winter 2025, TFANA’s The Merchant of Venice will play at The Lyceum.

The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh presents the Theatre for a New Audience production of The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare, featuring John Douglas Thompson as Shylock, directed by Arin Arbus.

Shakespeare’s perennially contested play about corrosive bigotry and blinding vengeance is poised at the radioactive intersection of race, class and religion in Arin Arbus’s production.

As Arbus observes, “The Merchant of Venice depicts a divided society saturated with hate and inequity. The world boils with anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia, misogyny, classism, and homophobia.”

The show’s uniquely diverse company evoke a deeply stratified Venice. Its connections to our own grievously fractured world are vivid, stark and startling.

The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh sits at the heart of the city in our 140-year-old building welcoming over 100,000 people each year.

At the Lyceum, we believe that theatre is good for the soul. Led by our Artistic Director David Greig, we bring the best theatre from around the world to Edinburgh and share the best of Scottish theatre with the world.

We’re experts in making theatre. We rehearse in our studio space across the road from the auditorium, and our costumes and sets are designed and built in house at our workshop in Roseburn, Edinburgh.

Community is at the heart of what we do. In 2024, our creative learning department celebrates 25 years of developing and nurturing talent. Our Youth Theatre programmes have been the starting point for many Scottish actors, fostering newfound confidence and lifelong friendships. We also host 60+ writing groups, technical courses and training.

Over the past 59 years the Lyceum has continued to make world class theatre – take a seat and experience it for yourself.

John Douglas Thompson as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, directed by Arin Arbus. Photo by Henry Grossman.