In the lovely Magdalen College President's Garden this week you can catch the Oxford University Drama Society preview performance of The Taming of the Shrew before it goes on to a brief tour of Japan. The play tells the story of a shrewish girl (Katerina, played with great energy by Laura Murray) whose ways are mended thanks to her husband starving her and depriving her of sleep. Given this premise, it's tricky to keep the tone light and comedic, and modern performances usually work hard to create a subtext, play up the attraction or insert various subtleties to soften the story. This performance boldly plays it straight, relying on the youth and charm of the actors to keep the show light and engaging. Richard Darbourne is pure brazen arrogance as Petruccio, Richard Graylin languidly unsubtle as lover-turned-schoolteacher Lucentio. Katharine and Bianca (curls, bows, and fluttering eyelashes from Polly Findlay) make for an amusingly catty pair of sisters; and whenever the play hits a serious note, the clowns are on hand to intervene with horseplay and silliness, delivered in a style somewhere between traditional clowning and the slapstick violence of silent films; the scenes between Daniel Harkin (a swaggering, athletic Grumio) and a flirtacious Leander Deeny (Curtis, Taylor, etc.) were particularly funny, while Prasanna Puwanarajah lent an air of lascivious authority to every scene he appeared in. Perhaps in an attempt to make the plan more accessible to a Japanese audience, gestures and expressions are exaggerated throughout, and physical action, stagecraft and performance are treated with as much care and thoroughness as the (very complete) text. With the 30s costumes, floppy hair and comedy-review style acting (there's even a Charleston break!) the play occasionally comes across as more "Brideshead Revisited" than Bard, but
perhaps that's all part of the fun; for this is probably the most Oxfordian slice of summer Shakespeare you'll see this season.

Jeremy Dennis, 17.07.03