Taming of the Shrew
Petersfield Shakespeare Festival, Bedales, Friday, July 27
BY MY troth, there were a few confused faces in the crowd at the beginning of this inventive and funny production.
Given that the cast began the show speaking everyday modern English, the audience could have been forgiven for thinking that producers had made the radical move to remove the Shakespeare dialect from a Shakespeare play.
But fear not, for the olde Taming of the Shrew was performed as a play within a play, with the setting not being Padua, but a pub up north called The Shrew’s Tavern (surely it should be in Shrewsbury?).
For those not familiar with the story, Gremio and Hortensio (played by Jon-Paul Rowden and Crispin Glancy, respectively) are rival suitors to Bianca (Molly Ward), the younger sibling of Katharina.
But their dad, Baptista (pub landlord and Bet Lynch copycat Paddy Navin) won’t allow suitors to enter until Kat is wed, but that’s unlikely as the eldest is the Shrew.
Cue the arrival of Petruchio (Chris Hollis) from Verona, who has the cash to splash but needs a wife, and a session of what Love Island viewers will call grafting (no, I’m not a fan of that show, ugh).
Joy Brook was wonderfully thorny as Katharina while the decision to play out a pub fight scene involving her, Hollis, and half the cast in slow motion was genius.
Hollis looked and sounded every part the leading man while Lucentio (Harrison Rose) raised plenty of giggles as another suitor to Bianca, especially when he and Glancy attempt to court her under the guises of Latin and lute teachers.
Laughter and dry ice was plentiful but there was also moments of seriousness, with Ward giving a powerful critique of men and a freshly-thawed Brook berating headstrong women in an eye-catching scene.
Needless to say there’s a happy ending with the play finishing like it started, with dancing and the crowd cheering to a jovial Babs. Paul Ferguson