The Taming Of The Shrew
02 October 2024
Globe Theatre
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
One of Shakespeare’s most controversial plays, The Taming Of The Shrew, currently running at the Globe, gets an absurdist touch for this new production. Doubling up on the often removed framing device by adding puppetry to the mix, it’s a bizarre and absorbing performance.
Shakespeare’s well known and often harshly critiqued play about gender roles and toxic masculinity, in which the beautiful, young Bianca can only marry once her older sister Katherina has been wed, but due to her being a wilful, objectionable woman, a shrew, suitors are hard to come by. When Petruchio decides to tame Katherina, he does so through violence, gas lighting, physical and emotional abuse, breaking her spirit thoroughly, leading to an often controversially discussed ending of whether the play is pure misogyny, or a moral tale on the damaging effects of male domination and violence. But let’s look at this particular production.
Christopher Sly, a drunken tinker, bursts into the Globe audience, shouting and ranting, and spilling his drink on a seemingly random patron, who reacts with anger and indignation. Sly collapses on the stage and is found by a Lord, who for his own amusement decides to trick a drunken man by clothing him like a nobleman and having his servants defer to him, trying to convince him that his drunken memories are a delusion. To this end, they sit down to watch a play, removing the audience from the plot of the play within the play. A further device is added by Katharina, the most harshly treated character of the play, being played by the previously randomly seeming woman in the audience, dragged onto the stage and forced to take on the role against her will. A brilliant decision that further deepens the themes of coercive and physical abuse that mark this play as so controversial. Katherina is physically abused and coerced into something she does not want before she even takes on the role of Katherina, a brilliant addition and framing of this play.
The staging is whimsically odd, with a giant teddy bear dominating the stage, the main entrance and exit for the player through its hollowed out abdomen. A trampoline aiding players in leaping over the bear’s legs. Vincentio sitting off to the side reading magazines, only occasionally jumping in to keep the actors in check. Some players have huge faces on their abdomens, others wield puppets, yet others strut around the stage in nightmarish muppet costumes, this is an absurdist take that adds a bizarre levity to this starkly dark play, adding a modern dynamic that enhances the sense of this being a moral tale showing heightened behaviours in order to condemn them, rather than an endorsement of Petruchio’s abuse towards Katherina.
The staging is delightfully bonkers while still following the plot well, adding witty and hilarious visuals to the spirited and lively action. A violent cautionary tale dressed in a Studio Ghibli meets the Muppet Show fever dream. Including a scene in which Katherina desperately tries to break free, breaking the framing device wide open by shouting her displeasure with the plot, not wanting to be subjected to this unbound violence any longer, before she is once again subdued and put back into her place in the play.
This new production of The Taming of the Shrew is unbound and dynamic, adding layers upon layers of absurdity to the play, enhancing the anti-subjugation angle of the reading of the play, an upbeat farce that entertains and provokes in equal measure.
