The Taming of the Shrew: a delightful reimagining of Shakespeare by an exceptional director!

The Taming of the Shrew: a delightful reimagining of Shakespeare by an exceptional director!

 

 

The Taming of the Shrew, Photo. Helen Mott, Cast: Rose Napoli (Kate), James Mac (Petruchio)

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

Comments are closed.