REVIEWS

SOMERSET COUNTY GAZETTE

The Taming of the Shrew, Saturday 4th June, at Cothay Manor Gardens, by Avril Silk.

The Taming of the Shrew by the all-male Festival Players, was a magnificent, rollicking experience, enjoyed by a large audience aged from eight to eighty. The wonderful open-air setting and kind weather (despite the overcast skies) ensured a memorable evening of great good humour. A simple, elegant set, well-designed costumes, first-class voice production and confident, accomplished performances from the cast of seven allowed the audience to forget the always controversial sexual politics of the play and concentrate instead on the spectacle and the fun, expertly enhanced by Johnny Coppin’s musical direction.

The pace was fast, assisted by the decision to ditch the Induction and cut straight to the chase. Such a pace, which rarely flagged, presented the small cast with many challenges as they showed us a wide range of characters. So skilful was their doubling up that it was not until I was studying the programme afterwards that I realised how well their performances, costumes and disguises and masks had worked. I completely failed to notice, for example, that Scott Smith played Katharina, the Shrew, as well as Lucentio, suitor to Katharina’s apparently sweet, pliable sister, Bianca, played by Adam Trembath. In Shakespeare’s day, the female characters were played by men and Scott and Adam continued the tradition, performing with flair and subtlety. Modern audiences are used to this convention in pantomimes, and in order to enjoy them fully we willingly suspend disbelief at the sight of chaps in frocks, abandon political correctness and, metaphorically loosening our stays, surrender to the illicit delights of rudeness, knockabout exchanges and preposterous coincidences. Unless we do that the pleasures of Punch and Judy shows, saucy seaside postcards and old Benny Hill re-runs are lost to us forever. Director Michael Dyer, perhaps drawing on our pantomime heritage, pointed out that same-sex casts go ‘a long way towards nullifying [the] taint’ of Petruchio’s bullying and Katharina’s submission.

Scott Smith gave us a Shrew who, rather than being subjugated, appeared at times to be coolly assessing Petruchio, realising that here was her match, someone attractive and exciting with whom life would be an adventure. Her final speech, sometimes seen as sincere, sometimes ironic or sarcastic, was, on this occasion, sweet rather than submissive, suggesting more complex, satisfying harmonies than mere domestic accord.

As Petruchio, Paul Hampton was full of life – loud, funny, clever, cunning, compelling. His outrageous wedding costume received a round of applause in its own right – talented costume designer Vanessa Bolton endowed him with a startling cod-piece which he deployed to great effect. It was inspired to furnish him with a replica of the hat of the year – Princess Beatrice’s Royal Wedding fascinator.

Martin Tomms and Jeffrey Han played, respectively, Baptista, Grumio, Widow, and Servant, Curtis and Pedant, skilfully differentiating their characters with versatility and energy. Michael Dyer’s cameo appearance as Vincentio, at first bewildered by disguises and deceptions, then robust in demanding explanations, was finely judged.

And so to Andrew Bowen-Jones, who gave us two cracking characters. His rascally, twangling Jack-the-Lad charm and cheek brought Tranio and Hortensio to life with bells on. His first professional experience included the farce Last Tango in Little Grimly and it served him well in this setting. We will, I predict, see and hear a lot more of Andrew.

George Bernard Shaw hated The Taming of the Shrew, calling it "one vile insult to womanhood and manhood from the first word to the last.” I suspect his resistance was unbreachable, but if any production could persuade him to suspend his disbelief and accept that sexual attraction remains a mystery and perhaps Katherina was "liberated into the bonds of love" (John C. Bean) then this one could. (Although he might have been intrigued by the acclaimed Charles Marowitz 1975 Gothic production, The Shrew, which excised all the comedy, concentrating instead on sadism and brainwashing.)

In 1756 David Garrick reworked the play as Catharine and Petruchio. His popular, happy ending gives us a reformed Petruchio.

Kiss me Kate, and since thou art become

So prudent, kind, and dutiful a wife,

Petruchio here shall doff the lordly husband;

An honest mark, which I throw off with pleasure.

Far hence all rudeness, wilfulness, and noise,

And be our future lives one gentle stream

Of mutual love, compliance and regard.

And somewhere off-stage, a persistent voice asks a question which echoes down the centuries; ‘But what do women really want?’