The Taming of the Shrew
Novello Theatre February-March 2009

Conall Morrison's production for the Royal Shakespeare Company is a broken-backed evening that starts off as a farcical romp and then quite deliberately turns very sour.

One could argue that Shakespeare's script does that, but other directors have found ways to make it all fit together more comfortably than here. So this is likely to be a Shrew more satisfying in parts than as a whole.

Morrison includes the frame Induction (which many productions cut) about the drunk who is conned into thinking he's a rich man, and setting it in modern dress is as harmless as it is pointless. The play proper begins on a high comic note, with elements of commedia dell'arte about it - exaggerated type characters and lots of choreographed stylised movement, exaggerated double-takes and the like.

Even Kate (Michelle Gomez) is introduced as a broad comic figure. I've seen her meeting with Petruchio (Stephen Boxer) played better than it is here, but the tone remains light and the staging inventive.

And throughout the play the secondary action remains on that farcical level, from the interplay of Patrick Moy's Lucentio and Keir Charles's Tranio, though the attempts at disguise, to the discovery that Amara Karan's Bianca is a bit more sexually adventurous than a modest Padua virgin might be expected to be. Even the very minor roles of Biondello (Jack Laskey) and the Pedant (Larrington Walker) are allowed their broad comic moments.

But from the moment Petruchio marries Kate, their part of the play is dark and unpleasant, and if the process of taming her doesn't quite break her spirit, it clearly makes her choose to turn off emotionally as a survival mechanism.

The most chilling moment in the whole play comes at the last 'Kiss me, Kate,' as Petruchio gropes and manhandles her and she just stands stiffly, waiting for him to finish.

It is possible to interpret the play darkly, though it's not my favourite reading. But then you would expect the whole evening to support that tone. And it may be that director Morrison wanted the clash in tones to increase the shock value. But the price - a play that goes in a different emotional direction with each scene - turns out to be too much.

If you like the dark sequences more than I do, then the rest of the play will keep annoying you with its irrelevant trivia. If you like the comedy, then the ugly moments will seem out of place. And if you are willing to have both, then you'll wish that they had been better integrated - or at least made to seem part of the same play - than they are here.

Gerald Berkowitz

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Review - Taming of the Shrew - RSC Novello 2009