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.