Review: THE TAMING OF THE SHREW: A KINKY RETELLING, Bread And Roses Theatre

Perhaps the trickiest, most controversial work in Shakespeare’s arsenal, The Taming of the Shrew comes to the Lambeth Fringe in a peculiar rewrite. Zak Rosen and Paige Hann flip the script on coercive control and try to make the Bard kinkier. Petruchio becomes the submissive simp to Katherina’s Dominatrix in what could be an explosive take on masculinity, rage, patriarchy, and sex. At this stage, however, the piece still needs to be whipped into shape as it doesn’t know what it wants to say.

Revisiting Shakespeare’s canon to adapt it for a contemporary audience is always fun. The universality of his plots lend themselves to a variety of takes, so a BDSM-inspired scenario fits the Shrew really well. Rosen and Hann translate Katherina’s strong will and short temper into a series of scenes where she handles Patruchio’s shenanigans whilst fending off her father’s questioning (which comes as sound bites). Beyond the forced, heavy-handed humour, it’s an interesting dynamic. It’s a shame that it’s too disconnected and discombobulated to make sense as a whoele.

Condensing the play into 50 minutes is a task that would defeat many. The duo abridge the text, keeping some of the original prose alongside their own modern dialogue. The linguistic mix-and-match is satisfying; it’s the logical nodes of the core narrative that suffer. The result is disjointed and rushed, but the production still shows plenty of potential. The tone also deserves some TLC.

The pantomime-style of certain moments (including a drag scene set to the tune of Britney Spears’s “Toxic” that comes out of nowhere) clashes with the other more contained and developed sequences. It’s unpretentious but too crass at times, losing sight of the source material in order to deliver cheap gags in a muddy picture. As it stands, the cleverness of the adaptation is buried underneath everything that’s disappointing in it.

The mise-en-scène is only partially to blame – fringe theatre is by necessity bare and utilitarian – but there’s a lack of sophistication in the general direction that drags the performances down. The writing doesn’t ease this shambolic feeling we get by watching it, but Rosen and Hann involve the crowd throughout, turning the chaos into a recurring bit.

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