The Taming of the Shrew, The Tempest
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Observer

The new Stratford-upon-Avon season offered a brace of unexpected prologues. 

The Tempest began with an apology from its director, Clifford Williams, for the breakdown of the theatre’s computerised switchboard as to which to the play’s lighting-slot had been irrecoverably locked. Two nights later, Jonathan Pryce, billed as Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, was observed, apparently drunk and certainly disorderly in the stalls, coming up very rough with a programme seller who was attempting to tame him—and who looked to my puzzled eyes very like Paola Dionisotti his destined Katharina. So, Shakespeare’s last comedy and one of his first, with nothing much in common except a final preoccupation with concord and the difficulties of achieving it: which means, of course, they have everything in common. It is a theme of which both productions are aware, though in style they are as different as the plays themselves. To simplify unfairly: Michael Bogdanov’s Shrew is good and mod; Mr. Williams’s Tempest is trad and bad. I don’t know how much The Tempest suffered on its first night from the torch batteries and the tallow candles; Ralph Koltai’s set, an anonymous wasteland, might have been transformed by proper illumination, but on its own it is featureless, Mr. Williams’s main success, and one not to be underrated, is his arrangement of the immensely difficulty final scene with its six separate groups of characters. 

Paul Brooke’s unregenerate rate Antonio (the only fat Shakespearean villain I have ever seen) stands or sits aloof from the general rejoicing. Prospero—a performance of extraordinary kindness by Michael Horden—realises that, where his brother is concerned, he has failed; but the awareness goes for little since the production fails to blend all the characters into the same play. 

There is little tension among the courtiers, no more than routine ardour from the lovers, and, O Jupiter, how weary are the spirits. And where are the clowns? There ought to be clowns. 

There is, however, an impeccable Ariel—an extraterrestrial Jeeves—by Ian Charleson, who deals beautifully with the most haunting songs Guy Woolfenden has ever composed. 

David Suchet seems as Caliban to have broken through the barrier that separates a reliable from an exciting actor, though his grudge against Prospero is difficult to understand as they are both such thoroughly nice people. (This is actually the most charitable Shakespeare production in years, and if only for that, I would love to see it come together). Mr. Horden shows no bitterness towards Caliban which, read it how you will, robs the play of a dimension. Otherwise this is a Prospero well within sight of greatness: a study in love, loss and—supremely resignation. He effectively surrenders his powers on the line ‘They shall be themselves,’ restoring to his enemies their freewill in full awareness of what they are likely to do with it. It is, more than incidentally, a performance free of mannerism and vocally glorious. 

To return to Mr. Pryce, who we left duffing up the hired help. He clambers on stage claiming his name is Christopher Sly, and offering a free translation of Sly’s actual lines (‘I’ll wheeze you in faith’ becomes ‘No bloody woman’s going to tell me what to do’). He personally demolishes a pretty period set (arches and fountains and things). It is never seen again. 

Enter, as in Shakespeare’s Induction, a Lord, who proposes to dress Sly up as another Lord. A page boy (Mr. Suchet, looking disgusted) is got up as his lady. Then, though no players have been announced, The Taming of the Shrew starts; Mr. Pryce is (a) bemused, (b) embroiled, (c) Petruchio. The show is now plainly his dream, but at what point it began—or why, before the play proper, he should talk modern and everyone else Elizabethan—I couldn’t say. 

However, if what follows is sometimes lacking in finesse and even—given its premises—in invention, it is full of interest. The play becomes a man’s vision of revenge on a woman. This is not a love-at-first-sight- Shrew; there is a spark between them, even some fun, but he torments her, and she suffers, in earnest. 

Miss Dionisotti gets round her big repentance speech party by personalising it (as both her husband and her playwright instruct her), but most of all by taking it literally. When she says she will put her hand beneath her husband’s foot she does so—and he, moved and a little appalled, withdraws the foot. You are left distrusting the partnership while liking the partners. Mr. Pryce confirms his supremacy among our theatre’s horde of bovver-boys, but apart from that this tearaway performance is nearly all—not quite, since he mutters a bit—that could be wished; he is an actor with rhetoric at this command, and a deadly quiet at this core. 

The production—done in real modern dress, not the usual pop artifact—is justifiably very money-conscious. Baptista assesses the competing bids for his daughter’s hand on a mechanical calculator. When Tranio makes his big offer, it blows up under strain. 

For the closing wager on their wives’ obedience, the men sit round a green-baize table, handy for brandy and also for roulette. Petruchio, the winner, remembers to rake in the chips; Baptista conscientiously writes a large cheque for the reformed Kate’s second dowry. The production is intelligently ambiguous about the play’s ethics; ‘Peace it bodes and love and quiet life’ as Petruchio says, but only on masculine, mercantile terms.

The production is played up stairways and across catwalks: a severe contemporary ambience to replace the one that Mr. Pryce destroys. Both set and performance are concerned to make us rethink the play. They are also concerned with enjoyment, which is enhanced by a motor-bike, as dubious horse as ever staggered upon two pairs of actors’ legs, and a thoroughly delicious Bianca from Zoë Wanamaker. Messrs Brooke (Baptista), Suchet (Grumio) and Charleson (Tranio) reappear with honour.