The Taming of the Shrew, Lakespeare, Lake Tuggernong Park (and other venues) , 17 Feb-1 Mar

 Photo by Photox

This is my first time seeing Lakespeare in its natural environment (by a Lake) after seeing "As You Like it" in a pub and "Macbeth" in the B, and it's a delightful experience. These are, by their nature, broad, crowd-pleasing productions and this does indeed please the crowd with a broad audience-friendly production of one of Shakespeare's more problematic comedies. The gender flip in this production tries to combat the more problematic side and bring out the humour, but in essence this is still a play about marriage as a financial rather than an emotional choice, and one in which a massive amount of psychological torture is enacted on one of the lead characters to get them to submit to their partner. 

Karen Vickery directs the cast to play the text fairly full-on, and, particularly in the central Petruchia/Kit plot, this succeeds. She's helped by Ylaria Rogers' performance which can fairly be described as roistering, giving the character a vast amount of confident attack on those around her. Michael Cooper as Kit gives the character a delightful sullenness which given the state of the Paduan marriage market around him is perfectly understandable, and his shock at multiple outrages hitting him is delightful. Yanina Clifton as Grumia serves laughs on a regular basis, reacting wtih just the right amount of shock and awe to keep the audience tickled. 

The Bianco subplot is a bit more complicated - Shakespeare fills it with a lot of deceptions and complications and it's got to be said that Bianco himself doesn't come across as much more than a pretty something to be argued about for most of the subplot - his preferences play a remarkably small part of the material. It's strongly performed but it doesn't entirely escape feeling like empty time-filling as we get the contractual negotiations and impersonations that make up the subplot when we could be getting an insight into how Bianco is thinking and feeling. There's some great hautiness from Guiliana Baggoley as Baptista, Alice Ferguson is delightfully perskikety as Gremia, Alistair James McKenzie is indeed quite pretty and Blue Hyslop is clowny perfection as Biondello gets into a more-than-usually-ridiculous impersonation. 

Costume Designer Helen Wotjas gives a great sense of Renaissance Italy with practicality for running around on a Park Lawn for two hours. Rachel Henson's millinery is also a highling with some sutiably outlandish things for the various characters to don with enthusiasm. 

Lakespeare is by this point 7 plays deep in an ongoing tradition, and the tradition is nicely upheld in this production - it's a fun entry point to Shakespeare that leaves you with plenty to think about afterwards and a lot to delight about in the moment.