Updating the themes of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew with exuberant showmanship puts the business of experiencing live performance at the centre of this production by Melbourne Shakespeare Company.
In this case, director Emma Austin, together with set and costume designers Jemima Eva and Leah Downey, set up a carnivalesque atmosphere at Central Park in Malvern that highlights the artifice of social norms.
I love Emma Austin’s re-imagining of the play’s induction scene. In Shakespeare’s original script, it is written as a long introduction around Sly the tinker’s drunken dream. In this production, Sly, played fulsomely by Ali Samaei, is transformed into the company’s director, and all the characters of the original play are morphed into stylised ‘jobbing actors,’ keen to stay in work.
For fifteen minutes before the ‘real’ play begins, the audience is given a wonderful display of stereotypes in which egos require pampering and artistic decision. ‘Making’ is driven by the economics of ‘making do.’ Props become 2D cardboard facsimiles, and locations are reduced to barely relatable depictions of the real place.
What Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew has historically shown is that the shrew is part of the Western narrative of ‘love and marriage.’ In essence, the patriarchal structure requires that she is contained by both the father and the sister (and other women).
The proposition was made intrinsically ironic because all Shakespeare’s female roles were played by boys. Gender bending is in the very fabric of the making of every Shakespearean play!
Consequently, Petruchio (JP Vizcay-Wilson) and Katerina (Kian Pitman) are interpreted as one pair amongst a host of pairings requiring their relationships to have a resolution. We don’t know if any of them are a perfect match. At the very least, Katerina, with her beautiful looks and feistiness, and Petruchio, with his showmanship and towering confidence, are matched energetically.
By contrast, the tamer Bianco (Lucas Dwyer) and the more earnest Lucentia (Charlie Morris) have a far more complicated road ahead of them because of being more conformist. There is so much more pretending they need to do: swapping roles with servants and hiding from respective parents.
This calls on great acting by the ensemble. Baptista (Lyndall Grant), Gremio (Smeeta Singh), Hortensia (Gisele Forsyth), Grumio (Jackson Cross), Trania (Imogen Rabbitte), Biondella (Kaia Reyes), Pedant (Daniel Hillman), Vincentio / Curtis (Chris Broadstock), and Widow (Oliver Gorringe).
The company is a well-assembled cast of talented young performers. I loved their transitions from Shakespearean poetic language into contemporary song. This is no doubt thanks to the good musical direction of Natalie Calia. The music is reminiscent of many pantomimic and commedia touches throughout the production.
My one reservation came when I was afforded a choice at the beginning of the play regarding what interpretation we would be given subsequently. I think I heard that the choice comes down to ‘do you want to see cross-dressing or not?’
Even though I thought the moment was supportive of the vision of the play, it was a disproportionately short moment that then sends the play off into a particular direction. I wonder if you can ever do a gender-based exploration without any sense of cross-dressing and only role swapping.
Perhaps this last point remains an academic consideration, as The Taming of the Shrew is wonderful to view and deserves a sell-out season. Its presentation of gender politics will undoubtedly call up much discussion, debate and laughter.
The Taming of the Shrew is presented by Melbourne Shakespeare Company. It runs to 15 March at Central Park, Malvern. 148 Burke Rd, Malvern East Vic 3145.
Tickets: https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1490390
Website: https://www.melbourneshakespeare.com/the-taming-of-the-shrew
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/melbourneshakespeare/
Photo credits: Nick Robertson
