The Taming of the Shrew

Sport for Jove made its debut with this artful, magical retelling of the Shrew back in 2011, a new player on the independent scene declaiming its powers of invention and sophisticated stagecraft.  

Now remounted, director Damien Ryan and designer Anna Gardiner very plausibly set this mad farce in a silent-era, Italian film studio.  While vain actors queue to wed the gorgeous starlet Bianca (Lizzie Schebesta), her father Baptista Minola (Robert Alexander), here re-made as a Padua film director, insists that her elder sister, Kate (Danielle King), must be first off the shelf.  

Trouble is, the shrewish Kate is only happy as a new look aviatrix, swooping dangerously low over the heads of male bullies and deceivers.

Meanwhile, two of Bianca’s suitors (Terry Karabelas and Chris Stalley) take to drag to edge closer to her, while two others (Barry French and Amy Usherwood – she disguised in pants) hilariously take to film to illustrate their massive wealth.

The witty invention of this ensemble continues when Petruchio (James Lugton), here a naval man, takes up the challenge of Kate, and then starves and humiliates his new wife aboard his rolling vessel with its motley crew.

Ryan unobtrusively insinuates a modern banter around the Shakespeare, and while his new settings are also thematically true and delightful, his production is almost overstuffed with slapstick business.  And an imaginative, near universally excellent cast, most from the original outdoor production, sometimes looses verbal impact in the remote York Theatre.   But who cares!   

The final achievement of this Shrew is when Kate’s last problematic supplication is transformed instead into a moving speech to the mutuality of romantic, lustful love.  Anyway, in a filmed scene of departure, she gets the better of Petruchio in the cockpit.

Martin Portus