The Argentine Jewish community was reported here today to be concerned over plans by the Shakespeare Festival Company, a visiting British troupe, to include the play, “The Merchant of Venice,” as one of two productions to be presented here shortly. The play portrays a Jewish merchant in renaissance Italy in a manner which evokes Jewish protests.
Reflecting the growing concern over the play, La Luz, a local newspaper, cited the anxiety in Jewish circles over the fact that the production will be “brought to a country in which the Jewish community has been besieged for three years with a dangerous wave of anti-Semitism.”
The newspaper criticized the British Embassy and its cultural service for not having been “attentive to the situation” and for not displaying the required sensibility to prevent such irritation. “It would be a sample of human understanding to substitute any other more adequate play for the Merchant of Venice,” the paper declared.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
