The Taming of the Shrew: a delightful reimagining of Shakespeare by an exceptional director!
Director Andrea Donaldson has taken a cast of mixed talents and various levels of experience, and transformed what might have been an uneven ensemble into a perfectly coherent orchestration of immense enjoyment. The Taming of the Shrew has been reinterpreted into many different forms of performance by a multitude of theatre groups from vastly different cultures (the American musical Kiss Me Kate or the anti-colonial text by Martinican Daniel Boukman who sets his version in post -revolutionary Algeria as a theatrical intertext – La véridique histoire de Hourya– , critiquing the failure of the revolution to liberate Muslim women who, in the author’s mind, kept their symbol of subservience by continuing to wear the veil.)
Now, Andrea Donaldson has created a playfully serious event performed by a group of young actors who while keeping most of the original text and adding much contemporary vocabulary, turn the play into a live cartoon full of grotesque caricatures subjected to the meticulous gaze of the director. She controls the timing, sets up non-stop interaction of such great energy that the weak moments are rendered almost unnoticeable.
The same actors who appeared in the other Festival show As You Like it were given, in this show, opposing roles, a tactical choice that brought out the humour and the fun even more. Katherine Gauthier who played Rosalind in As You Like It, exciting the love interest of Orlando even as she is disguised as a boy, became, in the Taming of the Shrew, the balding, doddering old male, Gremio, an object of mockery, lusting after the beautiful Bianca, Kate’s younger sister and even flirting with a young unidentified person in the first row through a portion of the evening. Donaldson transforms Gremio into a clown and by setting gender and age difference as sources of comedy and ridicule , her choice could be considered risky but Donaldson is fearless and in fact it worked because the general tone of the show was mostly raucous humour, where few were spared! Are we in the presence of a talent resembling that of the great Mel Brooks who uses the most ghastly situations to poke fun at and critique untenable historical events as he did in The Producers! We must watch her to find out.
We are in Prescott Ontario in 1987. Baptista ( Elizabeth Saunders), is the mother of two Italian sisters. The beautiful young Bianca (Melissa Morris) and the ear-splitting shreaking wildcat out of hell, Kate (Rose Napoli who played the level-headed accomplice of Rosalind – Celia-in As You Like It). Tradition insists that the elder sister marry before the younger one can wed and the whole problem is there. The younger , dainty, Bianca has many suitors and they all conspire to arrange a marriage for her older sister so they can get their hands on the younger one. The tactics bring about clashes of all sorts where everyone is disguised as someone else to further the ambitions of a lovesick friend. However, the arrival of the seductive, strong -willed, handsome, daring young rock singer from Newfoundland (in this version) riding a bike(known as a horse!) takes centre stage as we see how he conspires to “tame” this wild woman and make her his wife.
The final monologue where Kate, in Shakespeare’s version agrees to declare in public how she accepts to perform her wifely duties, to teach all wives to love and obey their husbands as all good wives should, shapes the whole play. Feminist interpretations find fault with the idea of a heroine who has her wings clipped by a man after being so severly mistreated by an a apparently abusive husband but Donaldson solves the problem beautifully.
Kate bites and scratches and kicks and pinches making Petruchio wince and yet Petruchio does not physicaly harm her (although he did tear up her dress at one point!) . In fact, the final moments of that subservient monologue are actually very touching and become even more moving when, Petruchio lies down flat on his stomach before her and kisses her feet in his own symbolic gesture of a lover’s complete submission to his wife. This choice of staging creates a strong sense of equality , a bond, that cannot be ignored. The vibrations between the two characters are very strong and both Jamie Mac (Petruchio) and Rose Napoli (Kate) had the chance to show us their talent as actors by sharing this moment so deeply.
There were many examples of excellent staging . The unveiling of the real and the counterfeit Tranio as Jesse Nerenberg takes over the role of his friend Lucentio ( played by Alex Furber) to woo Bianco in the place of his “Main Man” . As well, Zach Council (a hippy hitchhiker ) is coerced into playing the father of Lucentio to make the young man’s family inheritance even more attractive for Bianca’s mother since the real Lucentio has no father and thus cannot compete with the fortune of the older suitor, the doddering Gremio, in the eyes of Bianca’s mother.
Suddenly in this parade of ongoing disguises, Quincey Armorer appears as Vincentio, the real father of Lucentio. The sparks fly and Armorer’s body language transforms him into a most delightful caricature of a father (he is of course the real father)..so the real and the imaginary are artfully combined in this delightful staging where several levels of performance go far beyond the character in the text. Such surprises keep popping up in this staging, showing us how the director, in a truly Shakespearean mindset of a theatrical mise en abyme , followed her cast attentively and brought out all that was necessary for her special vision of the 1980’s including the hip hop gestures, the musical interludes with relevant lyrics that added a lot of bounce to the show.
One problem, no mention is made in the program of the music for this particular production. Titles and musicians names should have been clearly printed because their work certainly was noteworthy. .
Never a moment of confusion. The texts were beautifully articulated and the ironic contradictions between what was said and what was shown were often not so subtle bits of near slapstick humor that had us chuckling under our breath…wondering what was coming next.
This Taming of the Shrew is two hours of pure fun. Don’t miss it. This is the final week of the show which runs in Prescott until August 18. For times and tickets call 613-925-5788.
for information see www.stlawrenceshakespeare.ca