TAMING THE SHREW

True love! That’s the answer, isn’t it? And if Kate and Petruchio find true love then all the business that passes between them, the eponymous ‘Taming of the Shrew,’ is so much hot air for them and amusement for us. For unlike some ‘Shrews,’ this was a happy, if hard-bitten, romantic comedy that can leave everyone content.

Yes, it’s ‘Rain or Shine’ time again: that wet fortnight at the beginning of July when the strolling players come westwards and southwards into this little corner of our land sometimes this side of the Welsh border, sometimes that, depending on which night you turn up.

Yesterday they played in Chepstow Castle, that most magnificent pile of masonry beside the River Wye that pre-dates even the earliest of Shakespeare’s history plays. As usual the performance was al fresco (we might as well start early with the Italian seeing as ‘the Shrew,’ like so many of Uncle Will’s creations, is set in Lombardy). As usual, this is Shakespeare played, one imagines, ‘as she was writ’ that is to be rumbustious, comic, full of business - verbal pyrotechnics for the masses, all overlying one or two more serious themes.

The serious theme here of course is the extent to which a wife should obey her husband - indeed - to what extent should a husband bend a wife to his will? “I will have my property,” says Petruchio as he throws Kate over his shoulder and rides off after a precipitate wedding. Kate, of course, resists, as she has spiritedly resisted everything that has come before in her life.

That duel of spirits is indeed the axis on which the play turns. But here Shakespeare takes us back to a world with which his audience would have been entirely familiar, but of which most people today are entirely ignorant - the world of falconry. Petruchio likens Kate to a hawk that must be ‘manned’ - a singularly appropriate description in Kate’s case - and through lack of food and sleep be made to sit with docility on his master’s fist.

Anyone reading TH White’s marvellous book, ‘The Goshawk’ can relive that author’s experience as long night follows long day while the Goshawk of the title - a Kate by any other name - sits sullenly on his fist bating savagely at every opportunity. Following the old methods he does not feed the hawk, nor let it sleep, but instead reads to it - Shakespeare as it happens. He rewards the bird when it is still, but until the hawk accepts him, he does not sleep nor eat himself, his only sustenance being a glass of whisky and more Shakespeare. It is an epic battle of wills: man against bird.

‘The Taming of the Shrew’ is thus this ‘man against bird’ story transferred to the human sphere and the question is: who will really win - how should the play end? Three couples share the ending so there are endless possibilities for a director. Let me not therefore tell you how this production ends but only say that the Director, James Reynard, who also plays Petruchio to Charlotte Kingsford’s magnificently haughty Kate, is endlessly creative and there are twists, surprises - and laughs - galore.

Of all the plays ‘Rain or Shine’ have done in the past few years this is certainly one of the best performances yet. Wonderfully slick, beautifully spoken and acted - extravagant in its physical comedy - but also eminently believable.
As an audience we may have been windswept (but dry at least, indeed the sky was practically cloudless) by the stiff breeze that rolled up the river and swirled around the castle battlements, demolishing part of the minimalist scenery before the play had really even begun. We may also have been a thin audience, for many people would surely have been put off by the surfeit of rain over recent days and in the great space of Chepstow’s Middle Bailey our response and applause must have sounded painfully weak and unappreciative.

Nevertheless, like true professionals the company carried on strongly, putting every ounce of energy and not a little physical discomfort into the proceedings.

A really super show - and worth going out of your way to see. Only do remember to wrap up well. The weather can be most unkind after the interval even if it doesn’t rain. Don’t be afraid of overdressing. Leave the dashing about in flimsies to the cast.

FRIDAY STAIRS

Every Friday, just in time for elevenses, my day brightens when I hear the Spectator magazine plopping through my letterbox to land on my doormat with a rustling thud. Quickly, I rush downstairs to meet it.

Like most periodicals these days the Spectator comes with a full compliment of high-end advertising material wrapped up in an irritating plastic bag. Having no money for cars or jewellery, no figure for the couture and frankly no inclination to travel to exotic destinations, the glossy leaflets make a swift exit towards the recycling bin. I try to lead a sustainable life.

The magazine itself is a different matter. I embrace it eagerly and creep up the stairs to my office with a newly-made mug of Yorkshire tea, hoping to be spared the plangent jangle of the telephone for the next quarter of an hour.

If this sounds as though I am enjoying something illicit, well that is correct. The Spectator, friends tell me warningly, lurks deep on the right of the political spectrum. It is true that some of its readers probably wish for a return to some Hercule Poirot world of the 1930s when anyone not born in Britain was classed as alien. But that’s the readers, not the writers.

It is also true that some of the magazine’s opinions irk. I come from a respectable Liberal background. My mother used to tell anyone who cared to listen that she was a teller for the Liberals in General Elections, with an authority that made this lowly office seem as elevated as cabinet rank. My sister became a local Liberal councillor. I still pay my subscription and receive regular, if these days unheeded, summons to by-elections.

I wonder though if I am not drifting rightwards with age. Is this why I read the Spectator? I now get impatient with bureaucracy and am annoyed at the fecklessness of so many who should know better. I am Irritated by our present day ‘blame culture’ in which no one seems to want to show any personal initiative or shoulder any responsibility.

I am driven mad by the Kafka-esque excesses of Health and Safety which make teachers (apparently) wear goggles if they need to affix a notice using drawing pins. And when the little wooden cylinders that we blood donors used to twiddle when donating are taken away on the grounds that they might harbour germs.

Being a simple and independent soul running the smallest of small businesses, I view the burgeoning myriad of quangos and regulatory bodies and the committee management needed to co-ordinate and sustain their work, with the greatest suspicion. I ask how can we possibly afford for every decision to be made and documented in accordance with rules devised by someone else? Best practice has not only become unaffordable, it has stifled good practice. We are actually going backwards and as taxpayers we are paying through the nose for it. So anyway it seems.

But back to my office at the head of the stairs and the tea and the magazine, which I am already leafing through for the cartoons. For I haven’t come to love the Spectator for its politics but for its cartoons, its quirky blogs on life (Low Life, Real Life, High Life, Slow Life) its book reviews and its jarring articles by Rod Liddle who has a unique way of arguing a case which leaves me scratching my head and wondering seriously about my own opinions. And that’s good.

Mind you, I haven’t always loved the paper in this way. My present desire is only the culmination of a three year courtship. When it first arrived - I am not sure that I didn’t gullibly sign up to the flattering blandishment of a free subscription one sunny and carefree day and then couldn’t summon up the effort to cancel the direct debits - the paper would sometimes lie unopened and unread on top of the filing cabinets until thrown away in a clear out weeks later. It was only gradually, almost with reluctance, that I started to read bits here and there.

I suspect Matthew Parris may have been responsible, a writer whom I always read faithfully in the more mainstream ‘Times’ and whose style I admire. He writes fortnightly in the Spectator and is always thought provoking, interesting, humane.

Bit by bit I have come to love these quirky challenges to my intellectual and political perspective. Today I can’t say I read it all for some of the heavier political articles seem to me just ill thought out, even silly. There is so much grinding of political axes that you cannot see the ironwork for the sparks. But that doesn’t matter if you are prepared to take the rough with the smooth and to look forward to an interesting thud on your door mat each Friday, secreting yourself away for a moment at the top of the stairs.