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ASP's Taming of the Shrew
Oct. 21st, 2009 10:25 amDrunk homeless guy staggers into a basement dive bar, rants incoherently for a bit, passes out on the floor. Bunch of guys with a sick sense of humor think it'd be funny to fuck with his head, make him think that he's actually a rich nobleman who's gone crazy and only THINKS he's a drunk homeless guy. At the same time, a bunch of actors can't pay their bar tab, and, in exchange for not having the bouncer beat the shit out of them, agree to put on a Shakespeare play to entertain the "nobleman." Unfortunately, they suck -- partially because there just aren't enough of them, so they're doubling so many roles that it's incoherent. Until the *cough cough* nobleman makes all the other folks at the bar take some roles -- and he ends up with the male lead. Playing against an actress who is an absolute raving bitch.
As is typical for my "reviews", this will be partly a review of the Actors' Shakespeare Project's opening play of their new season, and partly a general essay on the issues around it.
The Taming of the Shrew is one of the two most difficult Shakespeare plays for me to watch, the other being The Merchant of Venice, which, somewhat ironically, was directed last season by Melia Bensussen, who directed THIS Shrew.
So, where to start? With what I find so difficult and problematic about the play, or with what Bensussen does with that? Let's start with the problem, and then talk about ASP's solutions.
You could do worse as a starting point than this essay, which explains, among other things, that a man who doesn't respect a woman's boundaries in normal social discourse is pretty likely to not respect her boundaries at all -- or, in fact, to respect HER at all -- which means that he's a danger to her.
I just read that essay a couple days ago, and then Lis brought An American in Paris home from the library. We were enjoying it immensely, marveling at Gene Kelly's dancing, and loving the characters, and then Kelly, as the leading man, met the girl that he fell for (and she was nineteen, so I feel comfortable calling her a "girl" rather than a woman), and stalked her and pressured her until she agreed to go out with him.
At this point, Lis and I both realized just how uncomfortable we were with this, and turned off the movie. Of course, just for the record, Jerry Mulligan does end up with Lise, which goes to show you that stalkerish oppressive behavior gets rewarded, at least in Hollywood movies of the 1950s.
And in London stage plays of the 1590s.
Heck, in Shrew, it's worse. Lise gives in to Jerry because Gene Kelly is the hero, and is just so charming and sweet that she just falls for him because of his creepy obsessive stalkerish behavior, after only two or three days of him following her to work and stuff. Petruccio, on the other hand, uses starvation, sleep deprivation, and separation from familiar surroundings and control of social contact as brainwashing/torture methods. The most obvious way to read the play is of a domineering man using methods explicitly forbidden by the Geneva convention to inflict a Stockholm Syndrome condition on a woman, breaking her will and making her servile to him. To me, this is not the stuff that wonderful, frothy, lighthearted comedy is made of. And that's the challenge that a director coming to this play faces.
Mostly, you want to distance the audience somewhat from the uncomfortable bits, but not distancing so much that you've lost the point of the play. And Shakespeare gives directors a couple tools to do this. The most significant distancing tool is the Induction -- that the whole Taming of the Shrew isn't really happening -- it's just a play that the actors are putting on for the drunk homeless Christopher Sly.
But Bensussen has a couple other angles as well. Not only is the story actually a play-within-a-play -- but none of the people PLAYING in it are people that you want to identify with. Is the play deeply misogynistic? Yeah, sure it is -- but it's being played for, and by, a bunch of people who you wouldn't want to hang out with anyway, at least initially. So there's THAT distancing, as well.
But the most important thing that Bensussen does is choose to have Kate portrayed as a genuinely unpleasant person, played by a genuinely unpleasant actress (played in turn by the genuinely pleasant Sarah Newhouse). As such, Kate's "taming" doesn't feel like breaking the spirit of Woman, but rather a specific transformation of one unpleasant person into a better person. While Petruccio, in transforming her, is also somehow transforming himself (something which isn't supported by Shakespeare's words, but is done entirely by Ben Evett's portrayal).
I found myself surprised by how uncomfortable I wasn't, watching this version. I didn't feel that Bensussen had done violence to the message of the play -- but, she'd managed to make The Taming of The Shrew more into a taming of Kate specifically than a general condemnation of "uppity women".
In the Director's Notes, Bensussen talks about how her route into the play was to look at the theme of "transformation", and how various characters changed throughout the play. Related to that are questions of what people are REALLY like, and, in fact, what's real at all. As a cute way of bringing this message home -- Christopher Sly's clothing includes a Real Madrid t-shirt. Which just says "REAL" across the front. When Petruccio and Kate leave at the end, and Petruccio exits with his wife -- he's wearing the shirt again. Is Petruccio leaving with Kate? Is Sly leaving with the actress? Both?
Neither?
This is a production worth seeing, partially for seeing how ASP manages to deal with the textural challenges.
But mostly because it's a hell of a lot of fun.
As is typical for my "reviews", this will be partly a review of the Actors' Shakespeare Project's opening play of their new season, and partly a general essay on the issues around it.
The Taming of the Shrew is one of the two most difficult Shakespeare plays for me to watch, the other being The Merchant of Venice, which, somewhat ironically, was directed last season by Melia Bensussen, who directed THIS Shrew.
So, where to start? With what I find so difficult and problematic about the play, or with what Bensussen does with that? Let's start with the problem, and then talk about ASP's solutions.
You could do worse as a starting point than this essay, which explains, among other things, that a man who doesn't respect a woman's boundaries in normal social discourse is pretty likely to not respect her boundaries at all -- or, in fact, to respect HER at all -- which means that he's a danger to her.
I just read that essay a couple days ago, and then Lis brought An American in Paris home from the library. We were enjoying it immensely, marveling at Gene Kelly's dancing, and loving the characters, and then Kelly, as the leading man, met the girl that he fell for (and she was nineteen, so I feel comfortable calling her a "girl" rather than a woman), and stalked her and pressured her until she agreed to go out with him.
At this point, Lis and I both realized just how uncomfortable we were with this, and turned off the movie. Of course, just for the record, Jerry Mulligan does end up with Lise, which goes to show you that stalkerish oppressive behavior gets rewarded, at least in Hollywood movies of the 1950s.
And in London stage plays of the 1590s.
Heck, in Shrew, it's worse. Lise gives in to Jerry because Gene Kelly is the hero, and is just so charming and sweet that she just falls for him because of his creepy obsessive stalkerish behavior, after only two or three days of him following her to work and stuff. Petruccio, on the other hand, uses starvation, sleep deprivation, and separation from familiar surroundings and control of social contact as brainwashing/torture methods. The most obvious way to read the play is of a domineering man using methods explicitly forbidden by the Geneva convention to inflict a Stockholm Syndrome condition on a woman, breaking her will and making her servile to him. To me, this is not the stuff that wonderful, frothy, lighthearted comedy is made of. And that's the challenge that a director coming to this play faces.
Mostly, you want to distance the audience somewhat from the uncomfortable bits, but not distancing so much that you've lost the point of the play. And Shakespeare gives directors a couple tools to do this. The most significant distancing tool is the Induction -- that the whole Taming of the Shrew isn't really happening -- it's just a play that the actors are putting on for the drunk homeless Christopher Sly.
But Bensussen has a couple other angles as well. Not only is the story actually a play-within-a-play -- but none of the people PLAYING in it are people that you want to identify with. Is the play deeply misogynistic? Yeah, sure it is -- but it's being played for, and by, a bunch of people who you wouldn't want to hang out with anyway, at least initially. So there's THAT distancing, as well.
But the most important thing that Bensussen does is choose to have Kate portrayed as a genuinely unpleasant person, played by a genuinely unpleasant actress (played in turn by the genuinely pleasant Sarah Newhouse). As such, Kate's "taming" doesn't feel like breaking the spirit of Woman, but rather a specific transformation of one unpleasant person into a better person. While Petruccio, in transforming her, is also somehow transforming himself (something which isn't supported by Shakespeare's words, but is done entirely by Ben Evett's portrayal).
I found myself surprised by how uncomfortable I wasn't, watching this version. I didn't feel that Bensussen had done violence to the message of the play -- but, she'd managed to make The Taming of The Shrew more into a taming of Kate specifically than a general condemnation of "uppity women".
In the Director's Notes, Bensussen talks about how her route into the play was to look at the theme of "transformation", and how various characters changed throughout the play. Related to that are questions of what people are REALLY like, and, in fact, what's real at all. As a cute way of bringing this message home -- Christopher Sly's clothing includes a Real Madrid t-shirt. Which just says "REAL" across the front. When Petruccio and Kate leave at the end, and Petruccio exits with his wife -- he's wearing the shirt again. Is Petruccio leaving with Kate? Is Sly leaving with the actress? Both?
Neither?
This is a production worth seeing, partially for seeing how ASP manages to deal with the textural challenges.
But mostly because it's a hell of a lot of fun.
Playing downstairs at the Garage in Harvard Square -- and they use the awkwardness of the space to their advantage -- through November 8. Tickets and details available at http://www.actorsshakespeareproject.org/ Blogger Gift Disclosure: actually, we didn't get press tickets this time -- this year, we bought a season subscription. But they DID make up an extra press kit for Lis and me.