By William Shakespeare
Directed by Jude Christian
Designed by Rosie Elnile
Composer Corin Buckeridge
Shakespeare’s Globe
Friday 4th October2024
14.00
CAST
It’s playing in repertory with Princess Essex, so the same cast mainly
Matthew Ashforde – Merchant, cover
Nigel Barrett – Christopher Sly, Gremio
John Cummins – Biondello
Lizzie Hopley- Hortensio
Tyreke Leslie- Tranio
Andrew Leung – Petruchio
Sophie Mercell-Bianca
Syakira Moeladi – Widow, cover
Jamie-Rose Monk – Vincentio
Eloise Secker- Grumio
Simon Startin – Baptista
Yasmin Taheri- Lucentio
Thalissa Teixera – Kathaina
MUSIC
Rob Updegraff- banjo, mandolin
Melanie Henry- clarinet
Richard Henry- MD, trombone
Joley Cragg – percussion
Ed Ashby- tuba
The Globe has this warning:
Content guidance: The play contains issues of misogyny, domestic and emotional abuse, including coercive control and gaslighting, violence (including murder) and strong language
Gaslighting? I thought it was the Wanamaker Playhouse that was candle lit, not gas lit. A murder? Where? Perhaps they mean murdering the text.
I like The Taming Of The Shrew. The trouble is everyone is afraid to play it as it is written. The RSC did a superb ‘Cinema Paradiso’ version back in 2012 with Lisa Dillon as Katharina. That played it for what it is. 1940s Italy was a fine setting. Then in the 1970s The Nuffield Theatre in Southampton did the definitive ‘straight’ version including the whole framing play, dressed as 18th century. We saw it twice (with different Petruchios). The last RSC one, in 2019 reversed the genders entirely, but stayed Elizabethan. It worked very well, but again, there is a fear of just doing it like Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton did on film. If I were choosing, men would play men, women would play women and I’d probably set it in Renaissance Italian costume (though 1940s Italy was the best I’ve seen). There’d be misogyny and emotional abuse and coercive control because THAT’S WHAT THE PLAY IS ABOUT.
Baptista has two daughters, Kathaina and Bianca. Everyone wants to marry Bianca, but she will not be allowed to marry until her older sister, Katharina, is wed. Katharina is the ball-breaking shrew. Petruchio will be the one who marries her and breaks her spirit.
There are a LOT of women playing male roles here. The theme of the play is the battle of the sexes, so the first principal would be correct gender casting. Then Thalissa Teixera as Brutus and Nigel Barrett as Julius Caesar were both in the RSC’s ‘train crash’ Julius Caesar in 2023, which used to be simply the worst professional Shakespeare production I have ever witnessed. Warning. USED TO BE.
Let’s start with the set. At Shakespeare‘s Globe. That’s right, the place Sam Wanamaker established to present the works of William Shakespeare and his contemporaries in their original setting. Yes, the foot stage left is pointing the wrong way. It irritated us too. The right way it would have blocked the space for entrances and exits.
Let’s go back. The brilliant Emma Rice was dispensed with as Artistic Director of The Globe seven years ago. There were three issues: dynamic lighting (at night The Globe uses plain all lights on both stage and audience as if it were daytime). Then speakers were screwed into the fabric of the building, and she used recorded sound and head mics, knowing that drama schools no longer teach projection. Third was ignoring the fabric and concept of The Globe by covering the stage with plastic curtaining for Imogen (Cymbeline Renamed & Reclaimed) in 2016. Repeat: ignoring the fabric and concept by covering the stage. See above.
What we have here is meta-theatre. The Taming of The Shrew has a framing device, the drunken Christopher Sly is dressed up as a lord while asleep, and they pretend he’s a lord, then he watches the play. That’s actually just a few minutes, so I’d say a FRAMING DEVICE, rather than saying that the whole of The Taming of The Shrew is a play within a play. Pyramus and Thisbe in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Mousetrap in Hamlet are ‘plays within plays.’ The Christopher Sly frame is simply dropped altogether in most productions, though beautifully done at The Nuffied all those years ago. It’s no loss if dropped.
So it starts us off here. Christopher Sly (Nigel Barrett) stumbles through the audience, drunk, singing Delilah. He shouts ‘How are you fuckers?’ to us. This will be one of three ad libs with ‘fuck’. One would be a surprise and get a laugh. There are, I repeat, three in the play. He puts his arm on one woman and spills water down her cardigan. She takes it off to look at it. It’s soaked through to her T-shirt. He grabs the cardigan, clambers on stage and asks that other classic Shakespearian line ‘Is there a dry cleaner in the house?‘ She goes up to retrieve it, he insults her, she throws the cup of water in his face (huge applause) and returns to the pit.
This is stage left, so it took place right in front of us. It was done totally convincingly by him, and by the woman. It was easily the very best part of the play. (It goes rapidly down hill from there.) Ah, but I’ve sat in every part of The Globe. From the galleries this will be hard to see, as a lot of pit activity is. From stage right, it will be very hard to see. Still, we were lucky.
So play one is tricking Sly. He will both play Gremio and spend the rest of the play standing in a child’s play pen stage right when he’s not involved as Gremio.
Play two is deciding to do a play. Slips of paper are handed out by Jamie Rose-Monk, who will be the director. They read out their parts, some with enthusiasm. Some with dismay. So it’s as if the parts were handed out at random, thus justifying having women in major male roles.
Sly gets Gremio, or is this the actor Nigel Barrett playing Gremio, or is it Nigel Barrett playing Christopher Sly who is in turn playing Gremio? Eloise Secker gets Grumio, servant to Petruchio. I did enjoy the Gremio / Grumio confusion on casting. I had to go back to edit this as I always get mixed up by the names myself. Jamie Rose-Monk gets the role of Vincentio, Luciano’s father, who does not appear till the end, so spends the play sitting on a sofa stage left reading a puzzle book, though when an entrance is slow, she yells, ‘Where the fuck are you lot?’
Eloise Secker as Grumio, Jamie Rose-Moink as the Director and Vincentio
They need a Katharina. Ah, select one from the audience. Yes, it’s the woman who threw water at Christopher Sly who is pulled up. We had recognized her in the earlier action in fact. It is Thalissa Teixera.
The conceit is Theatre of The Absurd. Dadaist? It’s set in a nursery with the giant teddy bear with vaginal slit as a door. Are they toys? Are they actors? Are they roles in a play by Shakespeare? I have nothing against radical settings for Shakespeare plays. I don’t mind all-male, all-female, I don’t mind whether it’s set in the 1590s, 1815, 1930s or on Mars in 2224. The thing is they have to work as coherent entertainment within their own world. This does not.
So we’re channeling Alfred Jarry, Pirandello, Ionesco. Sigh. When I was doing drama, all three had productions in the department. I did lights on one but mercifully can’t be sure which but strongly suspect it was Six Characters In Search of An Author. Ah, I was thinking. There will be marionettes. Humans are puppets in the universe after all. Good guess, Bianca is the first to appear with one but it will spread. Hers is mounted on a dress hoop with wheels so she can push it around.
Worse is Gremio and Hortensio, the suitors pursuing the lovely Bianca. They have large plastic fish heads strapped on their torsos. They manipulate the mouth with one hand through the mouth and can also shake hands through the mouth.
Lizzie Hopley as Hortensio (so often a great comic role) has to adopt a braying comedy advanced RP supposedly male voice. But of course Lizzie Hopley is not playing Hortensio. She is playing an actor (or possibly a Toy Story toy) who has been made to play Hortensio against her will. Simon Startin, as Baptista, the father of Katharina (the shrew) and younger sister Bianca gets great big cream coloured foam hands and foam feet which he has to waddle around in. Try acting in that.
Lizzie Hopley as Hortensio. Simon Startin as Baptista
Are there any good ideas? A couple. Lucentio (Yasmin Taheri) arrives with her servant Tranio (Tyreke Leslie). She is slight and female (playing male). Tyreke Leslie is a huge man. They decide to swap roles so that Lucentio can pose as a music teacher and woo Bianca. On come identical clothes, but hers is a size 10 copy of his, and his is a size 30 copy of hers. Tranio pretends to be a Nigerian prince (here, NOT in Shakespeare) … we had seen him in Princess Essex the day before where the lead, Joanna, pretends to be a Senegalese princess. He does the hip wiggling African schtick which makes him so popular with audiences. We have seen Tyreke Leslie do exactly the same before.
Then we have Andrew Leung as Petruchio. The base funny trousers, yellow socks and Chinese or Japanese jacket is the least flattering costume I could conceive of. Now we are confused. Is Andrew Leung cleverly playing a person at a kid’s party forced to play the role so presenting as wooden and inept? Or is Andrew Leung, an actor whose cv is filled with sci-fi film, actually wooden and inept? It’s one of the worst Shakespeare lead performances I’ve ever seen, though Nigel Barratt as Julius Caesar at the RSC competes. Not that his Caesar was inept acting, just part of a misconceived interpretation overall. This is plain dire.
They seem afraid to play Petruchio, who comes on beating Grumio’s bum (Eloise Secker)with a piece of foam plastic. Petruchio needs a certain sort of actor. Perfection would be Jack Nicholson. The part is a macho bastard (preferably unshaven and scruffy) BUT he has to have a twinkle in his eye. Richard Burton was great- in his case, played as a macho bastard but with undeniable charm as an undercurrent. To find Petruchio funny (and he should be funny) we need to know that he is a trickster. We need to know he is playing a game all along. It’s a wink aside to the audience role.
Throughout, the only person who has a handle on delivering Shakespearean lines is Thalissa Teixara as Katharina. Is this because she is the best actor or, among all these meta levels, is it because she was pulled up from the audience, so not part of the nursery toy / reluctant in the role concept? She mainly gets ‘possible’ costumes which helps until the end when she has a mouse suit (shrew? Geddit).
Thalissa Teixara as Katharina. The wedding / after the wedding
The production photos show Katharina after the wedding with a bruise below her eye (right). We noticed this on the day, and feared she’d slipped in all the leaping about. Was Petruchio supposed to have hit her? I don’t think the coercion was out and out physical attack.
The thing is, we are given the strong impression that virtually no one (excepting Teixara) on the stage knows how to deliver Shakespeare’s words. But they do, look at “Links On This Blog” below. We have seen most of the cast before, mainly at the Royal Shakespeare Company. All of them have been seen by us playing Shakespeare well with ‘proper’ directors. Three went to RADA. I can only think they are playing to some weird director meta concept of Jude Christian’s.
The blocking is also dubious. Grumio delivers some lines extreme stage right, addressing that side, then runs across and completes the speech extreme stage left, so facing us. We had no idea what was said stage right. People on the other side wll have no idea what was said to us.
What it displays is sheer terror of doing the actual play. Is this version funny? Not at any point. It’s like late post-Goons Spike Milligan cackling at his own absurd jokes. It’s like the unfunny bits of Frank Zappa (sometimes it works, sometimes it’s just silly). Shakespeare never needed anyone to invent comedy for him. Intrinsically, the three suitors, young Lucentio from Pisa, and the two older men, Hortensio and Gremio are very funny without any daft additions. The arrival at Petruchio’s house at the start of the second half is usually good comedy. These are good scenes in themselves. Having Grumio struggling with an inflatable column of supposed fire isn’t funny. Here the scenes are a garbled mess. There is an idea on teaching music with doh, re, me, fah, so that breaks into song. It would be obvious to break into Do-Re-Mi from The Sound of Music. Different tune. I suspect the Globe was reluctant to pay.
Does it need stating? The Taming of The Shrew is a play ABOUT misogyny. Just as The Merchant of Venice is a play ABOUT anti-Semitism. If you don’t like the play, don’t do it. I don’t like every Shakespeare play. I would avoid Henry VI – Part One for starters. If you don’t like it, don’t do it and try to subvert it.
The final Katharina speech is a problem, but then there are ways doing it. She can indicate that it’s ironic, she can indicate that her and Petruchio have set it up for fun.
In two words, Pretentious tripe. I think it’s the most misconceived and pretentious thing I have seen in many years. And I have seen Endgame. And Rough for Theatre II. One can only lay the fault on the director (and producers) as the poor actors have to do what they’re paid to do.
I dislike doing totally negative reviews, but if you never do a one star review, then the 3, 4 and 5 star reviews don’t count.
Overall?
one star. *
What is sad, is that most of the same cast played Princess Essex the evening before to an almost empty theatre with enormous energy. People come for Shakespeare. We both felt so sorry that for the large school parties, this was their first experience. It’s enough to put you off Shakespeare for life.
Just before the start: The Taming of The Shrew left, Princess Essex right.
THE PROGRAMME
What a contrast with the informative Princess Essex programme with background and writer interview. This one is as bad as the production. There is an article entitled What’s funny? to which I can only add, No one involved in directing and producing this has the faintest idea..
Then we get a sermon The Taming of The Shrew and Coercive Control, by Professor Marianne Hester, who is Professor Emeritus of Gender, Violence and International Policy at the University of Bristol. I am reminded that when I started writing for them, Oxford University Press never added Dr or Professor to names, stating that publication by OUP was the academic credential. I would put ‘by Marianne Hester’ then after that, ‘Professor of etc …’
I quote:
Petruchio’s behaviour to Katherina would in many respects be deemed as breaking the law.
No! Really? What about the rape and blinding in Titus Andronicus? Would that be deemed illegal? We need to know.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
The reviews come from the earlier run in June. We’re in the October run. They have had time to evolve it. A reminder that ‘two stars’ is as low as most critics ever go.
three star
Dave Fargnoli, The Stage ***
Alex Wood, What’s On Stage, ***
Sophie Humprey The Upcoming ***
two star
Kate Wyver, The Guardian **
“Bold, absurdist ideas jostle for attention in Jude Christian’s bemusing new production, turning Shakespeare’s tricky tale into a child’s silly game” Kate Wyver
Nick Curtis, The Standard **
Alan Harbottle, Review Hub **
Rachel Halliburton., The Arts Desk **
one star
Jim Keaveny The Arts Dispatch, *
LINKS ON THIS BLOG
It is in repertory at the Globe and RSC with Princess Essex.
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW
The Taming of The Shrew – RSC 2012
The Taming of The Shrew – Globe 2016
The Taming of The Shrew, RSC 2019
JUDE CHRISTIAN
The School For Scandal, RSC 2024 (Dramaturg)
THALISSA TEIXERA
Julius Caesar, RSC 2023 (Brutus)
Yerma, Young Vic, 2017
The Broken Heart, by John Ford, Wanamaker
The Changeling by Middleton & Rowley, Wanamaker 2015
NIGEL BARRETT
Julius Caesar, RSC 2023 (Julius Caesar)
Princess Essex, Globe 2024
JOHN CUMMINS
The Alchemist by Ben Jonson, RSC 2016
Don Quixote, RSC 2016
King John, RSC 2019
Princess Essex, Globe 2024
LIZZIE HOPLEY
The White Devil, RSC 2014
The Roaring Girl, RSC 2014
Arden of Faversham, RSC 2014
Princess Essex, Globe 2024
ANDREW LEUNG
Snow in Midsummer, RSC 2017
SIMON STARTIN
The Tempest, RSC 2023
Ralegh: The Treason Trial, Winchester 2018
Princess Essex, Globe 2024
JAMIE-ROSE MONK
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Bridge, 2019 (Snug)
Princess Essex, Globe 2024
ELOISE SECKER
All’s Well That Ends Well, RSC 2023
Richard III, RSC 2023
The Rover, RSC 2016
The Two Noble Kinsmen, RSC 2016
Princess Essex, Globe 2024
YASMIN TAHERI
Princess Essex, Globe 2024
Henry VI, Wars of The Roses, RSC 2022
SYAKIRA MOELADI
Princess Essex, Globe 2024
TYREKE LESLIE
Princess Essex, Globe 2024
As You Like It, RSC 2023
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