Misogynistic, largely unfunny and as a result arguably Shakespeare's least appealing play, The Taming of the Shrew demands bold reinvention if it is to stand up to 21st-century scrutiny — and Nick Hutchison's production doesn't quite manage that. His interpretation flirts with a dissection of modern sexual politics but lacks the cojones to go all the way. Fortunately, in Rachael Stirling's passionate, fiercely intelligent Katherine, it has a heroine who, despite the humiliations she suffers, succeeds in discreetly wresting at least some control of her life from her negligent father and bullying husband.
The staging begins, aptly for the venue, with a leggy chorus girl and a dapper master of ceremonies before a music-hall cloth. Their introduction to the drama is interrupted by Oliver Chris's drunken, chavish Christopher Sly, in a filth-spattered tracksuit. His appearance, and the inclusion of an abbreviated version of the play's Induction, which here shows Sly being tricked into taking the role of Petruchio, signal an intention to relate the play to today. From then on the cast are dressed in jeans, leisure wear or designer clothes. But the link between the opening Victoriana and our own times is not made clear.
There is a similar lack of definition to Chris's performance. If his Sly is broke and broken, there is a wealth of possibility in the suggestion that he would revel in the fantasy of marrying into money as Petruchio. And Petruchio's ill-treatment of Katherine seems to spring, here, from social and sexual insecurity. But such notions are only glanced at, and Chris overrelies on his lanky good looks. Simplistic acting, indeed, is a problem generally, with tics, moues and comic business standing in for depth and sincerity. Siobhan Hewlett's fashionista Bianca and Charles Aitken's cherubic Lucentio, in particular, are pretty but dramatically pallid.
Happily, there are compensations. Adrian Schiller makes a lugubrious, bitter Grumio. And Philip Voss's Baptista implies not just despair, but casual cruelty. He takes no pains to disguise his disappointment in his elder daughter; and Stirling shows us, in her liquid eyes and the twist of her mouth, how much it hurts. There's a sense of her having healed Chris's inadequate Petruchio: by giving him, in her final speech, public status, she makes him her equal rather than her superior — a deal sealed in a sexually charged kiss. It hints at the uneasy truce between men and women in a so-called postfeminist society; a pity Hutchison wasn't brave enough to do more than hint.
