The Taming of the Shrew, RSC, Courtyard Theatre

In Need of a Tamer Shrew

1 star

It’s not often that I leave the theatre at the interval. But when it came to renewing my parking ticket to accommodate the overly stretched-out running time of The Taming of the Shrew or just getting in my car, on this occasion the latter seemed more appealing. Conall Morrison’s production for the RSC of Shakespeare’s notoriously difficult play is a perfect example of sledgehammer theatre. While I am told that the second half sobers up a bit, what I experienced was a patronising interpretation of The Shrew where the actors over-emphasise Shakespeare’s language like morons, the timelessness of the misogyny theme is rammed down our throats, and on show is some of the least funny comedy I’ve seen for a while.

Starting with a clumsy introductory scene of a stag night in Soho featuring blow-up dolls and a token pole dancer, we are then taken into the play-within-a-play where Petruchio (Stephen Boxer) is in search of a wealthy woman to wed. He takes on the challenge of taming the intolerable Katherine (Michelle Gomez) who, kicking and screaming, eventually succumbs to the power of her masterful husband. Boxer is suitably cocky and swashbuckling as the Tamer, though a little too unlikeable, and Gomez is aptly and painfully shrill as his unfortunate wife. The production undoubtedly boasts a fine array of actors – mostly young and many new to the RSC. Under Morrison’s direction though we get a parade of competitive egos where upstaging is a-plenty, the mocking of accents gets in the way of Shakespeare’s language, and every line is mined for double entendre. And in all the bollock-kicking, breast-chafing and bum-slapping, the seriousness of the subject matter gets lost. The play grinds along at a frustrating pace as slapstick, cumbersome props, and bodily noises obstruct each line. Despite the setting of Padua, every time an Italian word crops up the actors make a meal of it as if it were Pig Latin. It’s no wonder that this Shrew has become the length of Hamlet. The production is devoid of any kind of truth and instead seems to be unified under the agreement to all take the piss.

Of course, you could say that I’m being over-reverential about Shakespeare, as the Sunday Times’s Rod Liddle, who immensely enjoyed the production, would say. After all, they liked a bit of bawdy, did the Globe-goers. But the piece’s hysteria and lack of any varying colours only highlight how easy it is to forget this is Shakespeare. Why can’t we leave Shakespeare’s humour and timeless theme to speak for themselves? After all, a preliminary scene that shows the horrors of the Holocaust would hardly be appropriate to a production of The Merchant of Venice. These clumsy additions suggest either that Shakespeare was a racist and a sexist, or that he was a moralist writing the plays to combat the problems of misogyny and anti-Semitism. Neither is entirely accurate.

Let’s stop imposing on Shakespeare what we think he is saying; let’s just allow these great plays to speak for themselves.

Anna Brewer : 30 Aug 2008 15:33 |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem