The Taming of the Shrew review – full of foolishness, low on laughs | Stage

hhow to fight with a scumbag? Jude Christian’s response is to throw her into a soft-play zone and put a gun to her head. Bold, absurd ideas vie for attention in this stunning new production of Shakespeare’s complex story, but they’re rarely portrayed clearly enough to make us care about the characters beneath the chaos.

Design takes center stage. Players pour out of the hollowed-out belly of a giant plushie, as if it’s not just a game or even a drunken dream, but a child’s silly game. The production is full of nonsense, but with few genuine laughs, as it reaches ideas of coercion through puppetry, with large faces glued to stomachs and heads bobbing on sticks. Rosie Ennill’s designs look fantastic, artfully quirky, but often distract from the pacing and clarity of the story.

When a brilliantly slapped Sly (Nigel Barrett) bursts into the Globe pit, he shoves into a passing group of players and pulls Marian (Talisa Teixeira in a frantic central performance) from the audience to perform Katarina’s final role. Plucked seemingly at random and headbutted into the role, this Kate isn’t sleazy, just a regular, quick-witted woman enraged by the outrageous misogyny being poured out at her. She follows the expectations placed on her: as a guest, to follow the script; as Kate to marry Petruchio (a torn Andrew Leung). But as her husband’s casual brutality continues, her embarrassment turns to heady, hysterical confusion.

She is not alone in feeling uncertain about the choices around her. Sly’s restraining energy is lavishly relegated to a caged spiky pen, while Jamie-Rose Monk’s scene-managing Vincentio confusingly spends the entire play reading magazines in the back. Kate is barely given a chance to fight back as the gun-toting subplot struggles to hold our attention. There’s an ominous feel to the players as guards, keeping the story going despite Petruchio’s facile violence, but this cult-like threat lacks grounding during the action.

With the descent of unreality comes the production’s most poignant scenes, as Kate suddenly, desperately needs to break free from the nightmarish game and her role in it. It’s an exciting departure from the script, and it’s all the more confusing when she returns to deliver the final speech, suddenly full and easy in its dedication. Whether due to indoctrination or heartbreak, we don’t understand why she changes her mind. The scene seems sour and Shakespeare’s problematic ending remains so.