Maidment Theatre
October 10-20 | Reviewed by Renee Liang

IN THIS hilariously twisted adaptation by Patrick Graham, a band of motley tramps capture two modern-day girlies gossiping on the edge of what appears to be a Mad Max-esque rubbish tip, and inexplicably force them to perform in their staging of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew, the lines of which (incidentally) the girls know off by heart.

If you can swallow that opening premise (not so much a suspension of disbelief as a mangling of it), then you’re in for a very wild ride indeed. The versatile cast – shifting between Renaissance Italy and the warped modern day, and often playing several characters each in quick succession – not only perform the full version of Shakespeare’s play, but an enclosing plot where the girls play out the tensions of their friendship and make attempts to escape. These are moments where the “fourth wall’ between the audience and the cast is effectively broken, not only physically (actors jumping onto the laps of audience members) but also through references in the text – on the night I was there, the cast members very clearly knew members of the audience, and used their names in dialogue, to much hysterical reaction.

The physical comedy in this play is its most successful part. There is a routine with chairs reminiscent of Charlie Chaplin, and a chase sequence with definite warped allusion to the Keystone Cops (including a set of wheels and a roly-poly nun). And yes, there is the equivalent of a pie fight. It is likely that Charlie Chaplin never had to perform his routines while also doing Shakespeare, so these must have taken a great deal of repetitive and hopefully occupational health-approved practice.

The blatant sexual innuendo does Shakespeare proud. The man (or girl) handling is hilarious – constant pushing, shoving, boob-jiggling and tying up (a length of leather rope must have been the most well-utilised prop in the whole play). From the perspective of my miniscule amount of drama training, this would have taken significant trust between the cast members, and it comes across in performance.

Unfortunately, sometimes the dialogue got lost in all the action. And despite valiant efforts with the Shakespearean dialogue, delivery was not always crystal clear, so the plot took some effort to understand. Keeping track of characters in Shakespeare comedy is difficult at the best of times - Shakespeare seems to have had a predilection for writing characters with similar-sounding names, further confused by his cross-dressing fetish. But when those characters are further played by girls playing men playing horses, then there are grounds for some confusion.

I found the set effective with newspapers, assorted trash, disposable plates and cardboard boxes explored to full potential. The costumes did look suspiciously like something a Drama Department would normally have thrown out, but I’m prepared to stand corrected and accept this as a deliberate stylistic device. Certainly it reflected the grotesque, which is the “bouffon” (focus on the excessively ugly) theatre style that Graham is using. There was what I felt to be a deliberate touch of unashamedly student budget staging. However the lighting and music (from taped modern day sources, as well as a surreal onstage sing-a-long) was professionally done and helped transition between scenes effectively.

Taming of the Shrew is, arguably, one of Shakespeare’s most dated plays in terms of theme. It is pretty obvious in this day and age that a play in which a man ’tames’ his wife by means of deception and deprivation of human rights (such as food, clothing, family and sleep), and then is feted by other men as a hero, is going to raise the hackles of nearly every woman (and the more enlightened of the men). Graham deals with the non-PC script by turning it around on itself, asking us to judge the play itself. Most of the male characters are portrayed as misguided buffoons and the female characters are shown to be long-suffering and, when they can be, coyly manipulative.

Underneath all the laughter is a more serious message (the tying and gagging is more than just a comedic device, though it is very funny). It is hard not to feel the same as the “shrew” Kate (ably played by Michaela Spratt) when she goes on one of her kicking and punching rampages. But luckily, on stage if not in the text, the women get some of their own back. Sort of.

In the end of a marathon and athletic performance (2 ½ hours), I went home slightly bedazzled, bemused and with a bittersweet taste in the mouth. And it wasn’t just from the chocolate cake they gave us afterwards.