The Taming of the Shrew review: More interesting for the actors than the audience

1/6
Nick Curtis @nickcurtis7 February 2020

Here’s an experimental production that’s almost certainly more interesting for the actors than the audience. In Maria Gaitanidi’s staging of Shakespeare’s thorny play, a nine-strong ensemble will play different parts throughout the run. It’s not clear how far this goes. Do the actors get to pick on the night or is there a vote? Will everyone get one good and one rubbish part, for fairness’ sake?

The one clear result of this approach is that the show is sedate to the point of sedation, presumably because everyone’s thinking “am I Grumio or Gremio tonight?” The poetry is slow and clear but often feels more like an incantation than a performance.

In a further bid to break down barriers that don’t need to be broken, gantries, ladders and platforms have been built to ‘unite’ the theatre’s tiers. Which means someone in the circle might have Katherine sitting in their lap, where she’s invisible from the stalls. There’s also a self-defeating attempt to reclaim the play from its reputation for misogyny, which is a bit like trying to get the Macbeths off a murder charge.

On opening night, women by and large played women, and men played men, which is a bit boring by Globe standards. Paul Ready was a prowling, incisive Petruchio while Melissa Riggall’s Katherine was more head girl than harridan. Their pairing was a covert romance rather than a battle of wills, mutual intrigue replacing aggression.

Rather than making her a feminist, though, toning down Katherine’s tart tongue denies her agency. It also, crucially, makes her unfunny. Conversely, I wonder how barrier-breaking it truly was, the night I saw the show, to make the Italian accent of actor Mattia Mariotti such an overworked source of laughs.

Even in the enjoyable moments here, I was distracted by the costumes, a base layer of spandex with cutaway garments on top, which makes everyone look like they are in a 1980s pop video. Some experiments should stay in the lab.

In rep to April 18 (020 7902 1400, shakespearesglobe.com)

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