One of Shakespeare’s earliest plays, The Taming of the Shrew is known for its deeply troubling views about women. After all Petruchio ‘tames’ Kate by denying her sleep and food, and in the play’s final scene she agrees that her husband is her ‘sovereign’ and must be obeyed. Even a contemporary of Shakespeare’s, playwright John Fletcher, felt compelled to challenge the misogyny of the play with his own sequel, A Tamer Tamed, or the Woman’s Prize.
In performance, directors and actors have the opportunity to re-interpret difficulties inherent in the text. In Lucy Bailey’s Shrew Kate and Petruchio are both badly behaved outsiders who find genuine affection and acceptance in each other. Their similar illicit social behaviour creates a sense of unity and equality: at different points in the play, both are seen hitting a priest, exposing themselves to onlookers and heavily drinking and smoking at inappropriate moments. Unsurprisingly, the first encounter between David Caves’ Petruchio and Lisa Dillon’s Kate is far from conventional. Caves and Dillon roll over the stage, lay on top of one another, push and shove and even mime a sexual encounter. Yet such an intimate and highly sexual introduction feels too climatic at this point in the play and, indeed, the physical rough and tumble between the couple soon become repetitive, losing its initial impact.
The sexuality is further heightened by way of Ruth Sutcliffe’s set: an enormous bed. At the rear of the stage are large pillows while the downstage area is a flat stretch of mattress, all covered with a beige sheet. Shifts in lighting are used to transform the space into a sunlit public square or the sparse gloomy interior of Petruchio’s house. But, essentially, it remains a great big bed, a setting which gives the many scenes of courtship a sense of intimacy and playfulness; the lovers tumble, fall, flirt and sprawl on the bed covers.
By making the sexuality so overt and complete, Bailey’s production is in danger of oversimplifying the play’s uncomfortable moral ambiguity. Christopher Sly’s nudity before and after the interval feels like a gratuitous distraction, a way of generating cheap laughs when Petruchio’s taming campaign is at its cruellest. And when Tranio and Gremio use comic phallic gestures as they boast about their marriage prospects with Bianca, it is all too easy to lose sight of the fact they are bartering over and making deals about a young woman’s future life and happiness.
Kate’s final speech of subjugation is notoriously difficult to perform – how does one deliver unreconstructed sexism to a modern audience? In a moving interpretation, Dillon speaks these lines as a rebuke to the society which had rejected her, with her voice conveying a visceral anger towards her sister and Hortensio’s widow. But towards its end, the speech mutates into a declaration of love for her new husband as she locks eyes with him, ignoring the wedding party around her. Although Dillon’s Kate offers to place her hand below his foot, it is Caves’ Petruchio who prostrates himself at his wife’s feet in adoration. The play ends with Kate and Petruchio undressing each other before disappearing under the covers to consummate their marriage; it is clear that the last few hours have been elaborate and extended foreplay. Yet this interpretation perhaps encourages us to forget the personal compromises and bullying that this marriage seems to entail. The Taming of the Shrew is both about sex and sexual politics and this production, though enjoyable and funny, rather glosses over the latter.
Read the Exeunt interview with David Caves on the challenges of playing Petruchio.
