REVIEW: Taming Of The Shrew
- Posted on March 19, 2008 9:50 AM
- 0 comments
Taming of the Shrew
Tobacco Factory, Bristol
Feb 13th – Mar 15th
Director: Andrew Hilton
Review by Sophie Pollard
Shakespeare’s ‘play within a play’ serves up forbidden fruit by the bucket load in the first instalment of this year’s Shakespeare season at the Tobacco Factory. The forbidden apple, Bianca, has a myriad of suitors desperate for her hand in marriage yet she is forbidden to wed until her rotten apple of an elder sister Katherina marries. Bianca’s suitors hastily set about finding a man fit for the task to tame Katherina with plenty of traditional Shakespearean misdemeanours along the way.
The ‘Taming of the Shrew’ houses a complex narrative to say the least, yet Director Andrew Hilton’s vision makes perfect use of actors, costume and props to make this production accessible to all.
Wonderful Elizabethan inspired costumes designed by Rosalind Marshall are abundant; Luciento’s (Oliver Le Seur) lavish outfit mimics that of piffling Lord Percy Percy from Black Adder II. But Luciento’s costume is not the only thing from Black Adder II, Bill Wallis plays the wonderful drunkard Christopher Sly who is tricked into believing he is a Lord, and hilariously spends most of the performance asleep or flat out on the floor as the complicated wooing takes place for his pleasure.
Leo Wringer rose amicably to the role of Petruchio, commanding the multifaceted personality of lover, manipulator, bully and comic to perfection. Saskia Portway’s performance as Katherina (or Kate) began violently and strikingly (at one point involving a pearl necklace being thrown across the floor in my direction), and then metamorphosises into a dutiful wife. Portway’s soliloquy at the play’s conclusion is true to the text, yet lacks believability.
Petruchio remains the key to the text for ‘He is more shrew than she,’ and Katherina’s final speech raises the question who is the real tamer and who is the tamed?
Related links:
The Tobacco Factory
Theatre tickets on Seatwave.
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