NC Shakes. Fest's "Shrew"
Quick notes on North Carolina Shakespeare Festival's production of The Taming of the Shrew:
(Took "Shakespeare in Performance" class.)
Good, funny, relatively unchallenging and therefore relatively problematic production. Acting strong overall (great to see Graham Smith back; played Gremio and had all the students talking about how great he was--and he was). Costuming basically kind of Rennaisance to Cavalier (I think) and worked. Lighting less successful. Set: Used their basic unit set with upper gallery usually to good effect (the scene-played-between-upper-gallery-and-stage business perhaps a bit overused but nice).
Style was broad commedia-inspired for the most part. No masks or broad acrobatics (but moments of broad comic physicality), but characters were strong commedia types (again, Graham Smith as the Pantaloon was wonderful). At first I worried they would be trying too hard to be funny; then I sat back and just laughed. Lucius Houghton was also back in the small Gremio role--not brilliantly inspired but very, very good.
Struck by how much of the play is not Kate & Petruchio, which was good because their scenes became progressively less satisfying to me, while the other business became progressively funnier. Kate was good: Strong, broadly drawn shrew (she's often eating--an apple in first scenes--very aggressively, which pays off in the starving business): she's angry and frustrated with good reason, and apparently deeply unhappy, too. But played very broadly. Petruchio was exaggeratedly but believably macho, which worked well--not so broad that you could dismiss him, and very recognizable. The initial Petruchio-Kate scene played very well: very aggressively erotic and physical--a real battle between them, charged with the kind of eroticism that comes from fighting. Good. However, as Petruchio developed, he softened, and his voice literally softened until by the end he was difficult to understand (throughout, to a degree, but it got worse). More than that, the development of the relationship didn't quite work. He had moments of surprise that his "taming" worked so well, and I think he was going for a kind of ambivalence or regret (?) but expressed by dropping the voice and throwing away lines rather than using the words. As for Kate, I didn't quite get her transformation. It happens, as it must if it's going to anywhere I guess, in the "sun and moon" scene, and I got what she was trying for, I guess, but I didn't buy the shift from grudging acceptance ("I'll do anything just to get food or get to Padua") to embracing the game with him. Therefore, her speech at the end--and their relationship by that point--seemed to lack the depth it needed if the story was going to be about two people who matured past the power struggle into genuine loving playfulness.
Still, it worked to the degree that I found the end quite disturbing--because Kate (and the play) seemed to be saying, "Yup, that's how it should be: let the man rule the roost," in spite of probably trying for something a bit more nuanced. Then they tried to finesse it with a happy dance.
So I had trouble--how could you not have trouble with this play?--but enjoyed the performance quite a bit. And yet, I felt distanced from it and from Shakespeare. Looked around the audience at one point and thought, "It's a good play that is speaking to these people (or entertaining them, at least), but they're also pleased to be "at Shakespeare" and participating in the endless endorsement of our triumphant culture. Bothers me more than ever before.
(Took "Shakespeare in Performance" class.)
Good, funny, relatively unchallenging and therefore relatively problematic production. Acting strong overall (great to see Graham Smith back; played Gremio and had all the students talking about how great he was--and he was). Costuming basically kind of Rennaisance to Cavalier (I think) and worked. Lighting less successful. Set: Used their basic unit set with upper gallery usually to good effect (the scene-played-between-upper-gallery-and-stage business perhaps a bit overused but nice).
Style was broad commedia-inspired for the most part. No masks or broad acrobatics (but moments of broad comic physicality), but characters were strong commedia types (again, Graham Smith as the Pantaloon was wonderful). At first I worried they would be trying too hard to be funny; then I sat back and just laughed. Lucius Houghton was also back in the small Gremio role--not brilliantly inspired but very, very good.
Struck by how much of the play is not Kate & Petruchio, which was good because their scenes became progressively less satisfying to me, while the other business became progressively funnier. Kate was good: Strong, broadly drawn shrew (she's often eating--an apple in first scenes--very aggressively, which pays off in the starving business): she's angry and frustrated with good reason, and apparently deeply unhappy, too. But played very broadly. Petruchio was exaggeratedly but believably macho, which worked well--not so broad that you could dismiss him, and very recognizable. The initial Petruchio-Kate scene played very well: very aggressively erotic and physical--a real battle between them, charged with the kind of eroticism that comes from fighting. Good. However, as Petruchio developed, he softened, and his voice literally softened until by the end he was difficult to understand (throughout, to a degree, but it got worse). More than that, the development of the relationship didn't quite work. He had moments of surprise that his "taming" worked so well, and I think he was going for a kind of ambivalence or regret (?) but expressed by dropping the voice and throwing away lines rather than using the words. As for Kate, I didn't quite get her transformation. It happens, as it must if it's going to anywhere I guess, in the "sun and moon" scene, and I got what she was trying for, I guess, but I didn't buy the shift from grudging acceptance ("I'll do anything just to get food or get to Padua") to embracing the game with him. Therefore, her speech at the end--and their relationship by that point--seemed to lack the depth it needed if the story was going to be about two people who matured past the power struggle into genuine loving playfulness.
Still, it worked to the degree that I found the end quite disturbing--because Kate (and the play) seemed to be saying, "Yup, that's how it should be: let the man rule the roost," in spite of probably trying for something a bit more nuanced. Then they tried to finesse it with a happy dance.
So I had trouble--how could you not have trouble with this play?--but enjoyed the performance quite a bit. And yet, I felt distanced from it and from Shakespeare. Looked around the audience at one point and thought, "It's a good play that is speaking to these people (or entertaining them, at least), but they're also pleased to be "at Shakespeare" and participating in the endless endorsement of our triumphant culture. Bothers me more than ever before.
posted by Graham at 6:20 AM
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