I really did not get on with this evening at the RSC - to the extent that I decided at the interval that I had had enough. In truth, this might be as much about the play as the production - maybe, even, the production pointed up the shortcomings of the play. Of course, The Bard can write about whatever he likes but I found not an ounce of humour nor thought-provocation in this tale of the taming a spirited spouse. This was very unlike Measure for Measure which deals with another distasteful topic - the abuse of power. However, it is interesting and a good choice by the RSC by being timely. With the Taming of the Shrew, the company had to rely on gimmicks - such as weird gliding across the stage - to extract any real reaction from the audience. Indeed, the amount of whispering around me suggested that many in the audience were either disengaged or mystified. They could be forgiven because the gender reversal of this production did not seem to work at all. We had a boy called Katherine (the Shrew) and although he was referred to as 'he' other lines retained the original female role (I think). Anyway, we were in a production that largely preserved Shakespeare's text but one that had also made some changes. I do not welcome that, any more than I would expect to go to a Beethoven symphony with some of the notes changed from the original.
So it all felt a bit of a slog to me. And a pointless slog, I'm afraid.
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