BWW Reviews: THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, Southwark Playhouse, October 22 2011

Petruchio and Katherine lock horns again, this time in Brixton Market, while Bianca is pursued with books and music around its fruit stalls and hair salons. Robin Norton-Hale has continued the approach she adopts as co-Artistic Director of OperaUpClose, directing a traditionally "difficult" work in a way that turns up the accessibility while losing nothing of the complexity.

It's a raucous, comic and, above all, knowing battle of wits that ensues between the shrewishly aggressive Kate (Elexi Walker) and the arrogantly confident Petruchio (Simon Darwen). Ms Walker's performance is full of knowing looks, of seeing the long term benefits of playing along with her husband's games with his description of the moon and his denial of her supper, while Mr Darwen is at least as keen on Kate's dowry as he is on Kate, but determined to get both.

Such collusion between the lovers allows an interpretation of Kate's famous final speech, in which she appears to advise her sister to be entirely subservient to her husband, to be directed more as a lesson in how to manipulate men - especially Baptista (Dave Fishley), her father. He may be older and more businesslike than the lovers, but Kate and Petruchio sucker him into paying over the odds in dowry settlement as part of the bet on wifely obedience struck between the new husbands. Unlike her sister, Kate is set up for a life on Easy Street.

While Kate and Petruchio are working out their unstated bargain, Bianca (Simone James) is stringing along a phalanx of suitors with flashing eyes, coquettish charm and the promise of sex on tap. There's much fun had here with men's propensity to crumble at the feet of a beautiful woman. Hortensio (GiLes Roberts) and Lucentio (Will Featherstone) are particularly preposterous as the two teachers vying for Bianca's wandering eye, getting plenty of laughs. There's good turns too from Matthew Newman as the old, rather dim, Gremio and Sarah Winn as Grumio, Petruchio's long-suffering and acid-tongued servant.

This can be a difficult play for a 21st century audience - misogynistic in its portrayal of human relations and rewarding, rather than condemning, psychological and physical torture - but this production never lets us forget Kate's perceptive intelligence and shows how its value can trump the superficial charms of Bianca's girlie, giggly appeal.

The Taming of the Shrew is at Southwark Playhouse until 29 October.

 

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