Something special to close our 72nd festival: star of stage and screen Tracy-Ann Oberman performing excerpts from a radical new production of The Merchant of Venice alongside a panel discussion sparked by one of Shakespeare’s most controversial characters.

Set in London’s East End in 1936, Ridley Road actor Tracy-Ann is playing Shylock as a widowed single mother and refugee from Russia, running a small business from a cramped house in Cable Street. As well as reading from the adaptation she will be joined by the play’s director Brigid Larmour, artistic director and chief executive of Watford Palace Theatre, as well as lawyer and author Anthony Julius as they discuss matriarchs, misogyny, modern parallels and reframing one of the best-known plays in history. Chaired by critic, columnist and cultural historian Kate Maltby.

Tracy Ann Oberman is an English television, theatre and radio actress. Having trained at the Central School of Speech and Drama, Oberman spent four years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, before joining the National Theatre. She was recently seen performing as the lead inFiddler On The Roof at the Chichester Festival Theatre. Tracy has just been seen as a lead in Ridley Road. She is well known for her performances in Friday Night Dinner and It’s A Sin.

Tracy is also a column contributor for The Guardian and was a regular contributor to the Jewish Chronicle and Red Magazine. As a playwright she has written a number of well received Radio 4 plays, including Bette and Joan, Baby Jane and most recently That Dinner of 67.

Dr Kate Maltby is a lead columnist for the i newspaper and is Chair of the Drama Critics’ Circle. Her work uncovering the story of antisemitic bias at the Royal Court Theatre has recently been nominated for a British Journalism Award.

Brigid Larmour is Artistic Director and Chief Executive of Watford Palace Theatre. She has directed for the Palace: Alan Ayckbourn’s Time of My Life and Absent Friends, Gary Owen’s We That Are Left and Mrs Reynolds and the Ruffian, Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Charlotte Keatley’s My Mother Said I Never Should and Von Ribbentrop’s Watch by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran.

Anthony Julius is a lawyer, academic and author. His books include Trials of the Diaspora: A History of Anti-Semitism in England. He is known among other things for his actions on behalf of Diana, Princess of Wales, and Deborah Lipstadt. He is deputy chairman of the London law firm Mishcon de Reya and holds the chair in Law and Arts in the Faculty of Laws at University College London. He is currently writing a book on censorship, which will be published by OUP in 2022.