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by William Shakespeare, directed by Sarah Stanley

Canadian Stage, Amphitheatre in High Park, Toronto

July 11-August 27, 2000

“A Female Petruchio Can’t Save This Shrew”

After an unsuccessful summer with John Gray's "Rock 'n' Roll" last year, the Canadian Stage's Dream in High Park returns to Shakespeare with Sarah Stanley's new adaptation of "The Taming of the Shrew".  Theoretically, it was an interesting idea to have a lesbian feminist director take on the play by Shakespeare most easily labelled as misogynist; in practice, however, Stanley's cartoonish direction trivializes the play and makes a muddle of the action so that she ultimately undermines her desired emphasis.  She reverses the genders of Kate and Petruchio and has the actor who plays Kate also play Christopher Sly in the Induction.  In the original, though Kate may submit at the end, she has been a more than equal match for any man in the play.  In Stanley's version the male actor, since he plays both the framing character and the strongest character in the play, becomes even more prominent than in the original. 

Initially, I was glad Stanley included the seldom-performed Induction in which Christopher Sly is throw out of a tavern for drunkenness and wakes up in the house of a merchant who wishes to play a joke on him.  Sly is led to believe he is the master of the house who has been asleep for 15 years.  The servants then perform the play, "The Taming of the Shrew" to entertain him.  While this set-up is simple enough, it causes endless problems in Stanley's production primarily because she hasn't decided if Sly is watching a play or having a dream.  She has him fall asleep partway through the first lines of the play performed for him.  Then she substitutes someone to remain sleeping in his bed in the second balcony above the stage so that the same actor can play Kate.  But then she occasionally replaces the substitute with the original actor as Sly so he can respond to the action below.  Not only does this not make sense, it also requires "Kate" to be absent from important scenes, including her own wedding (!), so that the actor playing Kate can climb all the way back up to his bed.  It is incredible that no one took Stanley aside to point out how damaging and awkward this toing and froing of Kate/Sly is in involving the audience in the action.  It would have been far better to have had the wall that reveals Sly's bed to close on it until needed at the end.  Even with all of Stanley's substitutions, the bed still remained empty for half the play, thus destroying  her over-elaborate conceit of having Sly watch himself as Kate.

I'm all for gender reversal if there is some point to it.  Robert Lepage reversed all the genders in the "Macbeth" he directed at Hart House in 1992 , a production that clearly demonstrated that Lady Macbeth and Lady Macduff are both stronger than their war-obsessed husbands.  By reversing only Kate and Petruchio, the effect seems merely a peculiarity.  Stanley's point could have been better made if she, like Lepage, had reversed all the roles.  As it is, she seems to be castigating the women like Bianca and the Widow for being women.  Why else does she visually link Bianca with Marilyn Monroe?  (Or is this just a crib from Richard Rose’s 1997 Stratford production?)  The one point Stanley does make is by having Petruchio turn up at his wedding in a woman's gown.  That is strange clothing everyone comments on and in itself makes a comment on the strange ritual of marriage.  The emotion of the moment is ruined, however, by having him marry a substitute so that Kate/Sly can return to his bed.

A strong cast might have been able to overcome the confusion and weakness in the direction, but that is not the case.  Best by far is Yanna McIntosh as Marian Hackett in the Induction and Petruchio in the main part of the play.  She has the outrage and vulnerability of Hackett and all the swagger and bravado one expects in Petruchio.  Given her stage presence, one can only feel sorry she was never promoted when she was at Stratford to play all the famous Shakespearean women in trousers like Viola, Rosalind or Imogen.  She not only masters all the gruelling action of the many fight scenes, she also has the best diction in the cast.  Not at all her equal is Jordan Pettle as Kate/Sly.  All of Kate's rages at which the men cower lost their force since Pettle could not modulate his voice and only shouted.  Only near the very end of the play did he move into a different mode of speech, but by then it was too late to start building a character.  From the start the all-important tension between the two characters is non-existent. 

There are a number of fine actors in the secondary roles, all hampered to some degree by Stanley's direction—Roy Lewis as Baptista, Patrick Conner as Tranio, Louis Negin as Vincentio, Patrick McManus as Lucentio, Michael Spencer-Davis as Grumio and Carly Street as Bianca.  Stanley unaccountably places the best scenes of Lucentio and Bianca in a cramped section of the first balcony even though the main stage below is free, making them pop up and down as in an old “Laugh In” skit.    The more minor roles receive sub-mediocre acting from Janet Burke as the Widow, Paul Haddad as Biondello, Anand Rajaram as Hortensio (and, confusingly, as Licio),  and Glen Cairns as Gremio, and Joris Jarsky as Curtis.  The four men all deliver their lines in cartoon voices and/or funny accents.  I found it strange that Stanley, who wears her correct politics on her sleeve, should have Rajaram perpetually wimpering and cringing and then underline his exits with Indian music. 

     

Troy Hansen’s modifications to the basic High Park set were fine but misused and the show was effectively lit by Andrea Lundy.  Hansen’s costumes placed the action in the 1970s with the men mostly in leisure suits and everyone but Kate and Petruchio in Day-glo colours.  Day-glo, as the director’s note suggests, is the colour of dreams.  It may be in the short, funny dream sequence in “Mamma Mia!”, but over the length of an entire play it merely seems like bad taste. The numerous fights were well staged by William Malmo, but I trust it was the director’s idea, not his, to include so much slapstick that it made the show too often seem like “The Three Stooges go to Padua”.

Despite the heroic efforts of Yanna McIntosh, this is the worst version of “Shrew” I have seen so far.  Earlier this year, I chided John R. Briggs for the cartoonish direction of his musical adaptation, “Romancin’ the One I Love”, but this show makes his look like a masterpiece of subtlety by comparison.  At least his show was consistent and frequently very funny and the actors, though all singers and dancers, all spoke Shakespeare better than the majority of the cast in this very disharmonious “Shrew”.

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: Yanna McIntosh as Petruchio and Jordan Pettle as Kate. ©2000 Canadian Stage.