The Taming of the Shrew

Synopsis

Two wealthy sisters in Padua must be married off. The modest, demure Bianca has no shortage of suitors, but who on earth will take the wild, ungovernable, ?shrewish' Katherina? Perhaps the gold-digging Petruchio, as maddeningly strong willed and perverse as Katherina herself, will be equal to the task of bullying her to the altar. Shakespeare's outrageous comedy introduces one of the theatre's great screwball double-acts, a couple hellbent on confusing and outwitting each other right up to its controversial conclusion.

Our Review:

31 July 2007

The comedy of how Katharina, ‘the Shrew’ is apparently ‘tamed’ by the shock tactics of her unpredictable wooer Petruchio raises problems for those staging or watching it. Apparently relishing devising ways to reduce Kate to a shivering, starving travel-stained wreck, he declares ‘this is a way to kill a wife with kindness’.

Shakespeare adds a framing device, where their story is a play within a play, staged by a lord as a practical joke on the drunken tinker, Christopher Sly, persuading him he’s also a lord who has commanded the performance.

This is often omitted, but Heather Davies’ spirited and funny outdoor production begins in one part of the Oxford Castle grounds, where the audience are party to the duping of Sly. As the play proper proceeds in the glorious natural theatre provided by the Castleyard, Sly finds himself, script in hand at first, playing Baptista, father of Katharina and the nubile Bianca. The blurring of the framework works perfectly for this small co...

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