Theatre
The Taming of the Shrew
San Anton Gardens

As the days become languid and the nights balmier, nothing beats a time-honoured event like Shakespeare in the garden. This year’s MADC offering is one of the bard’s wittier and sharper comedies.

The Taming of the Shrew has a plotline which has been used several times in film, most notably the 1953 musical adaptation Kiss Me Kate, the 1967 Zeffirelli film version and the cheesy 1999 Ten Things I Hate About You.

The story may be well-known but it is the incredible beauty and richness of the language of Shakespeare’s original, along with the clever comedic elements and innuendo which show the audience that men and women are so very different and that to get along and sweeten our lives, a little give and take and gracious good sense is all it takes.

Jonathan Orchard as Vincentio.

Director Polly March chose to create an imaginary provincial dramatic company to rival the MADC in a spoof which pokes fun at the club itself and required the actors to take on separate personae who all hail from the little village of Mazbugg and are putting up a play.

This is where their aspirations as thespians become realised – they present the audience with a tech/dress rehearsal of The Taming of the Shrew, where minor mishaps are bound to happen but are ignored because the show must go on. Not quite Noises Off but endearing just the same in its eccentric qualities, this device helped create the effect of a cast which is playing within a double context. And the idea of duplicity is central to the audience’s enjoyment of the play itself.

One of Shakespeare’s favourite techniques is that of misplaced identity, whether intentional or not, and is used as a ploy in this play to great effect. Alex Gatesy Lewis’s Lucentio swaps places with his loyal servant Tranio (Gianni Selvaggi) and then proceeds to disguise himself as a tutor to Bianca (Jasmine Farrugia) in order to get close to her – an idea that another of her suitors, Hortensio (Philip Leone Ganado) also has.

A production not to be missed this summer

Lucentio manages to trick suitor number three, Gremio (Renato Grech), into recommending him to Signora Baptista (Laura Bonnici), Bianca’s mother. All this, of course, happens because Bianca’s older sister Katarina (Rebecca Camilleri) is so difficult and contrary that she will not only refuse any suitor who has not yet been scared away but is also temperamental, rude to the servants and her mother and bullies her sister.

With Baptista banning any suitors from seeing Bianca until Katerina is married, Hortensio and Gremio lament their fate with Petruchio (Jonathan Dunn) who is interested in Baptista’s generous dowery to Katerina, more than he is in the actual lady, and he chooses to woo her partly as a challenge and partly for the money, until he realises he has found his true match in her.

Dunn gave a great performance as Petruchio – a bawdy man whose wit and obstinacy rivalled Camilleri’s equally fiery Katerina. These two characters were well matched and their chemistry on stage was clear.

Tina Rizzo as Biondello and Gianni Selvaggi as Tranio

Dunn’s ability to come across as dominant without being domineering and blend the comedy of his lines effortlessly with his character’s eccentricity was admirable. Camilleri’s Katerina was as sharp-witted and shrewish as they come.

Bonnici’s Baptista was a wise mother and managed her daughters as well as her amorous neighbours with great efficiency.

March’s direction focused on some great comic scenes including Samuel Mallia’s Fool, who had no lines but communicated only in music, on his alto saxophone, using great physicality and facial expression.

March’s choice of another fool, Tina Rizzo’s Biondello, was clever too, in having a very self-conscious persona playing an equivocator. I felt that Rambert Attard’s Grumio had rather weak comic timing and diction but Erica Muscat’s Nancy, Petruchio’s maid, more than made up for it in slickness and wit.

Leone Ganado’s clear diction enhanced his overly earnest character. This, coupled with Grech’s reedy voice made, for great figures of fun while Selvaggi’s Tranio was playful as the resourceful loyal servant.

With a simple set in the round, the focus was firmly on the interpretation of the lines, which was executed particularly well this year and gave rise to the patterns of Shakespearean language more clearly and enjoyably than previous years.

Chris Gatt’s lighting design helped achieve this, while the costume concept/creation by March, Laura Bonnici and Ritianne Mallia Tabone, blended elements of renaissance dress with contemporary styles – catching the actors’ personae in mid-rehearsal and giving the entire show a quirky, almost steam-punk vibe with a dash of 1980s neon.

The Taming of the Shrew is certainly a production not to miss this summer – a very slick, well-executed and highly enjoyable evening which was rewarding on two fronts. It succeeded in bringing Shakespeare’s language to life while maintaining the lightness for which the play was intended. A job well done.

The Taming of the Shrew is being staged daily until Sunday at San Anton Gardens at 8.30pm.