Monthly arts column

I don’t know if Shakespeare plays will be performed in heaven, but while I’m waiting to find out the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre (London) experience is quite a good appetiser. Particularly on a balmy summer’s evening with a glass of Pimm’s in one’s hand at one of the current performances of The Taming of the Shrew.

However, the play is traditionally a bit of a controversial one, particularly in its attitude towards women. For a detailed synopsis of the plot you will have to look elsewhere, but, suffice it to say, that the Shrew is Katerina, a feisty woman with no time for husbands, who gets given a tough time by her suitor, Petruchio, until she realises the true value of men, instructing other women by saying: ‘Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, thy head, thy sovereign; one that cares for thee’. I remember being scorned at Uni in my English tutorial for considering that it doesn’t take many steps from there to Ephesians 5.22-33, a passage that presents the marriage relationship as so saturated with selfless love that it could mirror the sacrifice and devotion of Christ and his Church.

God-given order

In Shakespearean times, the awareness of God’s creation order and the consequent concept of the chain of being were more widely accepted. The highest authority was recognised as God, followed by angels, the king or queen, nobles, men, women, children, animals, then lastly the devil.

The belief was that, if this God-given order was disrupted (those lower in the order gaining authority and rule over those higher up), then chaos in nature ensues. So that’s why, when Macbeth kills Duncan, King of Scotland, the horses in the stables eat each other. Of course!

Recent productions

The idea of a woman flouting a man’s authority may have seemed rather untoward to Elizabethan audiences, but over the last 50 years it has become absolutely the norm. Fish and bicycles! What do women possibly need men for? Thus, a couple of times, I’ve seen the play used to communicate messages about the victimisation or over-sexualisation of women. In the RSC production of 1996, for example, Josie Lawrence’s attractively spirited Shrew gritted her teeth and endured everything as a woman who had no choice but to accept the cruel hand being dealt to her. The message was that it was a triumph to see her spirit uncrushed and her attitude towards men unchanged through her persecution. The RSC performed the play again in 1999, but this time the play emphasised Shakespeare’s just-a-dream device, in which the whole story is dreamt one night by a modern day drunkard whose only encounters with women were on porn sites. The message was that it is sad perverts who think that women are only there for you to order around at your pleasure.

This Regent’s Park version of The Taming, directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, is therefore a bit of a surprise. It takes the Bridget Jones approach, laying on the romance good and thick to show a lonely spinster with questionable social skills eventually getting her man, himself misunderstood and considerate, under a gruff, Basil Fawlty-like exterior. The message is that love changes everything. Yet the final speech by Katerina was still difficult for the audience to hear. I am ashamed that women are so simple to offer war where they should kneel for peace. As The Independent newspaper review of the play reads, it’s a message that sticks in the craw. It reminded me of being at evangelistic events where it is pointed out to the congregation that Jesus is their only means of salvation. The reception is polite but the after-show conversations are more, ‘Wow, isn’t it warm still?’ and ‘Are you OK getting home?’, rather than dealing with the challenging stuff that they’ve just heard.

Pros and cons

Although I sensed that true harmony in relationships may have been unexpectedly discovered, reverence towards God was lacking in other areas, some Shakespeare’s fault and some due to the modern sensibilities of the production. Between them, there were lots of sexual references and many laughs were bought at the expense of the old and the ugly.

Despite that, the overall enjoyment was heightened by the visuals of the play; the set is a wonderful little Italian street corner with a cafŽ and rustic houses, the women wear fabulous 40s retro prints, and fireworks accompany Petruchio’s ‘Come, Kate, we’ll to bed’, as the other married men wonder how they could have been so stupid as to go for looks over subservience in their women. Heavenly stuff.

The Taming of the Shrew is on until September 11. Go to http://www.openairtheatre.org for details of tickets.

Eleanor Margesson

© Evangelicals Now - August 2006
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