LIKE ONE OF THOSE post-modern manuals about how to get and keep your man, THE TAMING OF THE SHREW is a play which argues that men and women can only live happily together if the women seem to defer to the men, acting out a graceful ritual of submission and obedience for the sake of social peace and harmony. It therefore presents a tough challenge to any modern theatre company; it's a
funny, sexy, beautifully-structured story that appeals to many of our most basic heterosexual fantasies, but it also outrages our modern sense of women's equal humanity and strength, to the extent of sometimes seeming almost unplayable.
The Wales Actors' Company from the South Wales Valleys, performing the play in a brisk two-hour version on top of Calton Hill, claims to have found the answer in the idea of a love between Katharine and Petruchio so deep that her public submission to him is equally balanced by his growing private adoration of her. And although their efforts to make sense of the final scene are still not entirely successful, the idea seems to give director Ruth Garnault and her company the energy to belt out a tremendously vibrant, witty and enjoyable account of the play, with a team of eight actors racing around the hilltop at tremendous speed, changing costumes on the run, and rushing back up onto their little platform stage, in the best spirit of travelling players since time immemorial.
Charlotte Rogers, as Katherine, is a real find, a gorgeous, blazing hoyden of a girl who makes it achingly clear how much strong women need to meet their match if they are to have happy lives;......the speaking of Shakespeare's text is a joy throughout, full of a confident, lilting sense of rhythm and meaning that reminds us just how rarely we see modern actors look absolutely at ease with the language of our greatest playwright. There are many more pretentious stagings of Shakespeare around in Edinburgh at Festival time, But there's something about the sheer joy in Shakespeare's text that permeates this production, and the energy this young company draw from it, that seems very close to the spirit of the man himself; and at the end, their little, wind-chilled audience cheered them to the echo. |
