Stratford’s Taming of the Shrew

Stratford's production of Shakespearee's The Taming of the Shrew

Last night Bonnie set up a projector in the living room, put a large fabric on the wall to simulate a screen and we watched the Stratford Production of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.  This is not the first time I have seen The Taming of the Shrew, nor the first time I have seen it done by the Stratford Company. 

Indeed, its memory is recent in my mind for it is the production that I watched with Michael Johnson a few days ago.  I wondered how long I could keep him at the screen with me.  Too bad that I ran out of the last half of the large Cadbury Milk Chocolate Bar that I had been hiding in my blanket cupboard before the film ended. 

I was hiding the chocolate bar from myself, so I knew where it was. 

My desire to keep him at the screen was greater than my need to keep back some candy for myself for random snack attacks.  I had the closed captions for Michael, but mostly for me.  He was reading them out loud as the actors were speaking them, not a practise I would have allowed in a classroom setting, but a practise I fully believed in at that moment – anything to keep him at the screen. 

I backed the bed up against the door to lock it so that we would not be interrupted by his younger siblings.  

Together we watched the show.  He kept viewing all the way to where the wedding between Petruchio and Katharina was to occur.  In the passing of that amount of time, we had seen a lute smashed over a scholar’s head, a master and servant switch costumes, and seen a man wearing pumpkin pants who also suggested to the audience that wearing them was both comfortable and stylish.  We had seen a man dressed as a woman, to be presented later, to the character, Christopher Sly, as his wife.  We had observed the writing style of setting a play within a play.  We listened to a medieval band of travelling musicians, and we observed fight scenes, screaming matches, sleep deprivation, the handcuffing of siblings buy siblings, and shrewish behaviour to parents, … oh, the list is only half started.

The next day, Bonnie read the Lego Version of The Taming of the Shrew to Michael and Alice, both so wrapped in attention  at the story that they were either leaning their bodies on hers, or peering over her shoulder and even reaching over it to turn to the next page, not really a comfortable position for her. 

Last night, Bonnie and I were alone in the evening so we engaged in another practise – now watching the show as a 300 year old systemic practise of taking away autonomy, of taking away the right to free speech, of the practise of objectification of another person, all the while cloaking this in humour. We watched starvation, the enactment of homelessness – there are plenty of academic essays on all of these subject, for The Taming of the Shrew.  The show is still on festival bills, now seen through a modern lens. 

When the show was over, we stayed up to talk about it for two hours – we didn’t get to bed until 3 am. 

Watching this show was a thrill in three parts.  One was to have an 8-year-old boy by my side, showing him Elizabethan English and a certain story form.  Secondly, I was reminded of how 300-year-old long systems of entanglement are still practised today. Third, I got to watch my daughter read Shakespeare to my grandchildren.

Now over to you, Rebecca.  I know you have some notes on this show.

~ Arta