Mercantile relevance

SINGAPORE might be halfway across the world from London, but it's throwing a big birthday bash for the 450th birthday of Shakespeare soon - in the form of The Singapore Repertory Theatre's (SRT) popular Shakespeare in the Park.

Playing for a full month, SRT expects some 30,000 people to troop past Fort Canning's gothic gates for the Merchant of Venice, including schoolchildren from Jakarta, Brunei and Malaysia for one of the only large-scale Shakespeare productions of its kind in this part of this world.

"People used to ask, 'Will you go to see Shakespeare in the Park', but it's now a question of 'When will you go'," says Charlotte Nors, SRT's executive director, of how the outdoor showings of Shakespeare has become a classic arts outing in Singapore.