Every year as part of the company's Main Stage season, Classical Theatre Company produces at least one work by William Shakespeare. The Merchant of Venice is known in the classical canon for the harsh scrutiny with which it views the existence of both racism and intolerance in society. Further exploring this theme, CTC's three-man staging of the play takes place in a sorting room in the World War II death camp of Auschwitz, an homage to other great renditions of this play, such as Tibor Egervari's Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice in Auschwitz, as well as an uncomfortable prism that juxtaposes the elegant words of Shakespeare with one of the most terrible places man has devised.

Through the course of their performance the prisoners are able to express their own stories and injustices calling on the strength in Shakespeare's words. The play does not end with a clear-cut resolution or with definitive answers on the issues of power and inequality. However, this production does stimulate the question of how prejudices big and small, blatant and subtle affect the lives of others and shape the world.

Directed by John Johnston, the cast includes Tom Prior, Philip Lehl and Matthew Keenan.