The sexual politics of coalition

When a play is heavily laden with literary and sociological baggage, it seems strange to burden it with an awful lot more. And The Taming of the Shrew is certainly weighed down, not only with the whole Christopher Sly ‘framing’ device – which relegates the main Petruchio-Katherina story to a dreamy play-within-a-play – but also with what is, to modern sensitivities, an offensive legitimisation of misogyny, oppression, wife-beating and bullying.

It’s a difficult play: rough and riotous, real and illusory, contrived and implausible. Anthony Burgess said it had ‘a good playhouse reek about it’, but I’ve still never quite understood why RSC audiences voted it their second-favourite comedy.

This latest production at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford is set in 1940s Italy and staged upon a gigantic version of Tracy Emin’s bed, which shrouds the actors in sheets and duvets, and muffles them under pillows.

This might deaden the acoustic, but it does provide the hilariously corpulent (and scarily bare-buttocked) Christopher Sly (Nick Holder) with a luxuriously comfortable mattress from which to dream about his newfound lordship and passively view the action.
 
Did I say action?

Well, we begin with a drunken brawl and progress over three very long-seeming hours through custard pie and pillow fights, which are to very little effect other than to shower the stage with floating feathers. It’s more Cooney farce than comedy.

And the bed isn’t some lush moonlight divan with memory foam from Dreams, but a drab and dirty brown sheet upon which fag ash is dropped, urine poured, and nocturnal fluids emitted. If this is Sly’s perverse fantasy dream, it’s a wet one.
 
Thankfully, we get a muscular Petruchio (David Caves) coming to Padua to woo the harridan from Hell Katherina, played by Lisa Dillon. Caves’s Petruchio is charged with testosterone but in full command of his ego and urges. But this Kate isn’t so much a shrew as a Siberian hamster. She might even be a Russian dwarf.

If the rodent has incisors, they’re frustratingly blunt; Dillon seems to prefer going round and round on a wheel than sinking her teeth into Caves’s shocking chauvinism.

There is some spark of electricity between the two: Petruchio is plugged firmly into the mains, but Kate’s dynamo is powered by the hamster. If your suitor or husband declared his intention to ‘tame’ you, and then proceeded to make you iron his shirts, cook his dinner, vacuum and dust for the rest of your days, a bit of attitude would be justified.

So, when that same husband subjects you to solitary confinement, sensory deprivation, starvation and shackles, I can’t help thinking there’d be more shouting, spitting and scratching than pouting, posturing and peeing.

Director Lucy Bailey tries to resolve all the feminist tensions in a few hours of binge-drinking, chain-smoking and erotic foreplay, which never quite manage to assault the senses or disturb sensibilities. There’s no sense of violation or outrage at the assimilation; no red womanism versus blue domination: this is the sexual politics of coalition.

Terence Wilton’s Baptista has a touch of theatrical knight about him as he desperately tries to marry off Kate in order that his younger daughter might be free to marry one of her suitors. And Elizabeth Cadwallader’s Bianca certainly shines against the pastel drabness of Ruth Sutcliffe’s set and the prosaic tedium of a myriad of suitors and their servants.

There’s much jocular knockabout between Gavin Fowler’s charismatic Lucentio (aka Cambio), Sam Swainsbury’s Hortensio (aka Litio), and David Rintoul’s vain Gremio. But they’re all consistently and spectacularly upstaged by Petruchio’s servant, Grumio (Simon Gregor), who spends the entire evening doing a rather convincing impersonation of Bobby Ball.

Composer John Eacott has written a wonderfully evocative score, and his superb band of musicians is integral to the action throughout, marching in with trumpets and trombones and sauntering around with mandolins and accordions.

The music is a lazy haze of jazzy ditties, which take the edge off the bitter text. When Kate finally yields to her lord, swearing perpetual submission and obedience, there’s no torment or irony, just graceful compliance.

Perhaps that’s more Shakespeare’s fault than Dillon’s, but there are more cheap thrills than there is profound humour in this production; more negotiated compliance than meeting of souls; and rather more lust than love.

But I have no doubt it will tour well (it leaves the RST soon for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Milton Keynes, Nottingham, Richmond and Bath). The bed is portable, the production inflatable, and the sheet easily folded for camping in the provinces.

Photo credit: David Caves (Petruchio) and Lisa Dillon (Katherina). Photo by Sheila Burnet/RSC.
 

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