The Merchant of Venice

A money-obsessed, patriarchal, dysfunctional society where wealth bestows power; one in which women cannot determine their own fate, and one marked by religious and racial prejudice. Sound familiar? Shakespeare's dark comedy could not be more resonant for our time. A play that offers no true villains or heroes, his Venice presents a culture as complex and troubling as our own, where the situations and questions posed ask us to examine the "quality of mercy" in myriad ways.