Globe Theatre were back at this year’s Malta Arts Festival with The Taming of the Shrew. Paul Xuereb reviews a production whose script is likely to be viewed askance today.

Leah Whitaker and Kate Lamb in The Taming of the Shrew. Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi

In its series of annual visits to Malta, the Globe Theatre’s Touring Company has this year presented Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew in an open-air production at the Argotti Gardens, Floriana.

One of the great dramatist’s early plays, it is also one of his better-known works, liable to shock at least as many as those it provokes to ire, with its treatment of man-woman relations at a time when most societies have won so many victories for equality among the sexes.

The comedy’s main plot shows how Petruchio, a well-to-do young man looking for a wealthy wife, decides to wed Katherina. Katherina is a young woman, well-known for her fiery temper and sharp tongue, who scared off many a suitor in the past.

He manages to win her by ‘taming’ her, as he would have tamed a wild stallion. This includes humiliating her at the weddng ceremony and whisking her off before the wedding banquet has even started, starving her during her first two days in her new home, promising her fine, new clothes and tantalising her by having them taken away when she says she very much likes them.

Worst of all, he subjugates her intellectually by forcing her to say it was the moon and not the sun that was shining, and by forcing her to address an old man as a young woman.

By the end of the comedy, Petruchio uses her to win a wager with two other newlyweds about who of the three had the most obedient wife. Petruchio has triumphed and, together with him, all those men who strongly believe in male domination.

Like many another director, Joe Murphy, though unable and unwilling to change the text, makes the audience see that if Petruchio has won, he and others like him win but a pyrrhic victory.

Kate Lamb, who plays Katherina, delivers her long final speech. Here, she not only acknowledges the justice of male domination but appeals to all women to follow her example, with face and voice progressively witnessing her revulsion and humiliation at having to affirm what she clearly does not believe in.

Lamb’s beautifully subtle performance makes it clear that she is in love with her husband, despite his mistreatment of her, but even this love cannot prevent her from revealing her deep unhappiness.

The play may be misogynistic in its spirit, but this time it is the women who own it

Petruchio’s expression shows he is much impressed by the pain behind Kate’s words as well as by the brilliance of her style. For once, perhaps, he has been upstaged by a woman and is not resenting it. We are left wondering if this bodes well for the couple’s future.

I have not said that Petruchio (Leah Whitaker), as well as all the other male parts, are played by women in this production.

I imagine Joe Murphy is making a political point: the play may be misogynistic in its spirit, but this time it is the women who own it and play the outrageous men; otherwise I am not sure what point having women play men is making.

Walker’s Petruchio, good-looking and tall, brings out the character’s outrageous and ruthless spirit. But I fear that only a male actor can fully bring out the macho roughness of the man who is also being contrasted with the cultured Lucentio (Becci Gemmell, the young man whose stratagem enables him to marry Katherina’s younger sister, Bianca (Olive Morgan).

As in previous Globe productions, much use is made of music, instrumental and vocal, that is largely modern. The production itself has, as has become very usual in productions of the classics, a modern setting.

A good many members of the cast are also very competent instrumentalists. When Katherina, at the end of the production, leaves the stage in pain and humiliation, she soon comes back and plays on the saxophone what sounds like a lament coming from deep inside her. But, the play being a comedy, the strain soon becomes cheerful and blends with what other members of the cast come in to perform.

It is, in fact, with music by the ensemble that the production opens. Murphy has kept the induction by Shakespeare, showing how a nobleman tricks a drunken man into thinking he is a lord and puts on the play of Petruchio and Katherina for his amusement. I can never make out why Shakespeare wrote this induction and tend to agree with those who leave it out.

The production differs somewhat from the Globe’s previous productions of comedies, by reducing physical rough and tumble to a minimum.

Of the servant roles, Grumio is the nearest to an old-fashioned clown, while Tranio (Remy Beasley), who pretends to be his master Lucentio for much of the action, is a refined servant and turns in a very polished performance.

Most cast members play two or even three roles, sometimes using different dialectal pronunciations. I enjoyed Joy Richardson’s West Indian accent in one of her three roles.

The Globe Touring Company’s productions have rarely been conspicuous for their verse speaking, but in this one Whitaker and Lamb stand out in this respect, as well as in their overall performances.

Lamb’s final speech brought out both the verbal music and the stylistic brilliance of the text, while Whitaker made long speeches to Katherina.

His listing of clothing and ornaments, to give one example, brings out the poetry that informs them.

One word about this year’s seating at the Argotti Gardens. There was no tiered scaffolding for the audience, so viewing the show meant having a good foreground of audience heads.

I sat in what was maybe the sixth or seventh row, and I pity those who sat in the back row.