Love, mercy, money and discrimination will all be tackled in Dubbo on Tuesday night.
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The Bell Shakespeare Company will perform the dark and humorous play The Merchant of Venice at the Dubbo Regional Theatre and Convention Centre.
It will be a special performance for Jessica Tovey, who plays Portia. Her grandma, who lives in Dubbo, will be in the audience. It was always nice to know someone in the audience, Ms Tovey said, and gave her extra motivation to make it a great performance.
“The play is most commonly known because of the criticisms that there were anti-semitic themes but our version has tried to open that up to make it about the way we treat outsiders in our society. The beauty of Shakespeare is that he wrote about human experience,” Ms Tovey said.
It was an important play to bring to regional areas, she said, not only because it was from a prestigious company like Bell Shakespeare, but because the messages it contained would make us a more kind and generous society.
There had been great reviews so far, Ms Tovey said.
“We’ve had some audience members who have come up to us after the play and say ‘I read the play in high school and I didn’t get it and I hated it and you changed the opinion of the play and made me look at it in a completely different way’.”