By Ash Cottrell
As a passionate, adventurous Melbournian, you’ve really got to try everything this city has to offer. In recent years, I’ve come to love experiencing Shakespeare presented outdoors, in parks particularly. While it’s usually, Macbeth or A Midsummer Night’s Dream, this autumn, Melbourne Shakespeare Company presents, The Taming Of The Shrew in Central Park, Malvern until the 15th of March.
Upon reflection, I think it is the peacefulness of a park, that contributes to the magic and wonder of experiencing Shakespeare outdoors. Even if it is in the centre of a bustling city like Melbourne, you suspend disbelief. It creates a peaceful, sensory experience where you hear very little but the chirping of birds, the rustle of the leaves overhead and the beautiful language of The Bard. In short, I find it transportive.
The Taming Of The Shrew is one of Shakespeare’s comedies. In contemporary contexts, you often hear it discussed with reference to the nineties film, 10 Things I Hate About You. As director, Emma Austin articulated in her directors note, it endures as one of Shakespeare’s ‘problem’ plays.
One of my favourite things about seeing Shakespeare is that I always look forward to understanding how the company has interpreted the text. This production incorporated contemporary pop music in its execution which the cast sang and danced to, with gusto. From The Romantics to George Michael, the audience were encouraged to sing along and be joyous. This approach has long been a method to engage a contemporary crowd and while the choice of music was fun and punctuated story beats, it didn’t move forward the narrative or reveal anything about character in an unexpected way and because of this, it seemed somewhat trite. In saying that, the cast committed to frivolity in the sunshine and all in all, it was a bit of fun.
Further, not being familiar with the text, my theatre-going-buddy and I wondered if scenes had been cut or modified as the progression of Katerina from shrew to ‘tamed’ by Petruchio happened in record time. This resulted in their coming together feeling somewhat unearned. In saying this, given the inherent misogyny of Petruchio’s behaviour, it would be an uphill battle with a contemporary audience.
In terms of performance, I thought the leads, Katerina (Kian Pitman) and Petruchio (JP Vizcay-Wilson) were, unsurprisingly, the strongest players. They brought both humour and realism to their respective roles and humanised what in many cases, is ridiculous behaviour. They were supported by a large ensemble cast, many of whom adopted more than one character. While the music was from our time, the costumes were old-worldly but nonetheless, beautiful, kudos to the Costume Designer, Jemima Eva.
Much to my surprise, we learnt in a brief Q & A following the show that the company played with switching up the gender of the shrew character, depending on the performance. Meaning, the leads played both characters. While I think this is an interesting approach, I did wonder why this wasn’t a general commitment made in the exploration of the play. In the absence of this flip in the version I saw, the play did struggle to penetrate the sensibility of a contemporary audience. Particularly when you consider the lengths Petruchio goes to tame the shrew, notably keeping her from eating and drinking. In retrospect, I would have liked to see the gender-flip version of this play and was left wondering why that wasn’t a steadfast commitment to this interpretation.
In saying that, boy was it good to get out in the sun and see some Shakespeare.
