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M.Couzens Reviews

Royal Shakespeare Company

The Taming of the Shrew

Photo courtesy of the RSC

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Conall Morrison

Set Designed by Francis O’Connor

Novello Theatre

12 February – 17 March 2009

ary Couzens

A review by Mary Couzens for EXTRA! EXTRA!

This production of The Taming of the Shrew, one of Shakespeare’s early plays, wears the influences of its Commedia del’ Arte heritage on its’ broad, blouson sleeves. Commedia may have then been on the minds of theatrically inclined 16th century Englishmen, as visiting Italian troupes, surprisingly, run by females, visited England when Shakespeare was a boy. Such groups would have been either rapturously received or condemned out of hand for their ‘unlady like’ performers, depending upon the open mindedness of those viewing them. The Commedia links in this play are apparent through its reoccurring character trajectory of Pantalone/silly old goat, the Capitano or braggart soldier, servants/zanni and their masters and, last but not least, innamorati or young lovers. Among the production’s parallel contemporary references, drawn from popular culture/herd mentality, are its alleged political correctness, (which is about “as funny as a crutch” as my granny would say) and television/situation comedy mannerisms that would have been mouldy-oldies before their time.  The one modern device in this patchy production that is well employed is the use of a tawdry Soho street by night for the opening setting of the play within a play before Shrew actually begins, which is returned to for the conclusion of the production, following its’ end, when the travelling players who have enacted Shrew hurriedly exit via a waiting lorry, thankfully dumping their press-ganged Petruchio, Christopher Sly, (Stephen Boxer) in the lurid street they’d found him on in the process.

Who doesn’t know the basic premise of this disturbing play? It is, without doubt, the most sexist of Shakespeare’s works with its horrendous domestic violence thinly cloaked in a shrew taming premise and overt, then socially acceptable double standards. Yet, at its core, the play potentially hides a soft spot which, contemporary directors often choose to tap into, namely that we, as humans need one another and that in some cases, angry, ‘I don’t need anybody’ people turn out to be the neediest ones of all. In this production however, director Connall Morrison keeps all of Petruchio’s (Christopher Sly’s alter-ego) nasty,  bits intact, lending a particularly vicious misogynist bite, literally, in one scene, to the performance of one of his leading actors, Stephen Boxer, in the dual, woman hating roles of Christopher Sly and Shakespeare’s Petruchio.

The storyline of Shrew is a follows: Baptista Minola who is naturally, a rich nobleman, has two marriage daughters, Bianca and Katherine. However, the eldest, Katherine, who must marry before her sister can take the plunge, is known around town as a devil woman as she, rather understandably (as she is all too obviously not her father’s favourite) has a fiery temper with wits and a branding tongue to match. Bianca on the other hand, is sweet, at least as far as the eye can reveal, and she has suitors galore, among them, the Pantalone of the play, an elderly landowner named Gremio, whose main rival before Lucentio (Patrick Moy) appears is the middle aged rich man Hortensio (Sean Kearns). However, Bianca’s dubious romantic options are quickly overturned once young Lucentio arrives in town, changes places with his servant (another familiar Commedia twist) Traino (Keir Charles) and proceeds to woo his intended, Bianca (Amara Karan), initially through intellect in the guise of a Latin tutor. Katherine, meanwhile, pines for a mate, without realising plans are already afoot to wed her off. Once her father, played with self-righteous chauvinism by David Hargreaves, settles a deal for Bianca’s hand with his old friend Germio, hurried plans are made for bearish, in this case, brutish Petruchio to wed Katherine, so there are no obstacles in the way to his favourite daughter’s wedded happiness and, most importantly, his financial improvement. However, when Petruchio takes on the task of ‘taming’ Katherina, he utilises brute force to bring her round to his way of thinking rather than wooing her in a more gentlemanly manner as she would naturally prefer he do, were he her chosen mate, which of course, he isn’t.

In this production, following a rowdy stag night employing every male member of the cast in all manner of cliché scenario, a lap-top dancer violating pleb named Christopher Fry is literally, picked out of a dust bin and recruited to play the part of Petruchio, providing he’d be capable of considering himself a lord. In order to bring this thinking about, the 1940’s influenced female (His Girl Friday?) casting director tricks the drunken vagrant, getting her aides to drop him off in a lavish boudoir while he’s still inebriated, where they act as his servants when he awakens. Once the oafish Fry takes the lavishly staged bait, the play within a play, The Taming of the Shrew, begins with Stephen Boxer assuming the role of Petruchio, complete with shifting persona and accent, in one of this production’s rare moments of invention. Similarly, Michelle Gomez, makes her initial onstage appearance in the guise of an atypical ladette, dressed in micro-mini and thigh high boots, pausing to gob on Boxer as Sly in disgust, along with her mate, and reappears within the context of Shrew as the biting tongued (as in acidly truthful) Katherina. Some of the finest moments of this production are Gomez’s, as her inner pain is nearly palpable during scenes in which the aptly named Boxer’s Petruchio is at his most hypocritically abusive and tormenting. Frankly, witnessing Boxer’s ill advised crotch grabbing and over-lapping innuendos as Christopher Sly during the play’s opening scenes were nearly as painful as his psychopathic glee as Petruchio.

First things being first, the sets, designed by Francis O’Connor, are simply fantastic, not just in the broader sense of the word, so much as for their versatility. One large rectangular tower like piece actually turns to reveal a different setting on each side. For example, one side has a large generic neon hotel sign, along with an X rated movie rentals sign and various other symbols of down at heel urbanism while another suggests the front, including entrance, of a 16th house in Padua, with others offering still more settings. The backdrop is strikingly mood shifting too, with its sepia Italian village roof-topped houses which display charmingly lit windows and doorways by night.

Now for the bad news – although there are momentary flashes of brilliance in the performances of both Gomez and Boxer as Katherine and Petruchio respectively, and some comic turns perpetrated by seasoned actor a.k.a. Pantalone Peter Shorey, and other actors at times, most notably among them, Keir Charles as Lucentio’s servant, Tranio, overall this is an uneven production with potentially offensive and/or lame humour intermittently infused in what often feel like shameless attempts to please, or is that appease? the masses. That this production is aimed at someone is apparent, it’s just that it’s not usually apparent who that someone might be. Some of the more loosely staged slapstick infused, pandering scenes may have drawn guffaws from some of the dozing teenagers in the house, but they may have also inspired groans from the Shakespearean buffs in the audience. So it has to be said, then, that in that way, this is an even production, in that it is one in which the painfully bad humour is just as painful to watch as its gleefully cruel Petruchio who relentlessly delights in browbeating and brainwashing the unfortunate Katherina, the latter scenario offering itself up as a painful metaphor for misogyny in general in the process.

Little or no warmth or humour within the context of Petruchio’s cruelty to Katherine is, no doubt, more authentically Shakespearean, as opposed to the ‘sexing up’ the characters’ mutual scenes generally undergo.  However, conversely, the bard may not have cottoned to the candy coated mindlessness encapsulated by scene after scene in which many actors yell rather than speak and chase each other about the stage like thinly drawn characters from Looney Tunes, in one case, tastelessly feigning a catalogue of sexual acts as they go, further delighting any youths in the audience who may have identified with their awkwardness. A night out at the theatre in the case of this production becomes a night when one devoutly wishes to be out of it, the theatre that is.

Novello Theatre
WC2B 4LD
Box Office 0844 482 5135

www.rsc.org.uk

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