Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.While the Barbican\u2019s production of Kiss Me, Kate tackles The Taming of the Shrew with irony, Jude Christian\u2019s new staging of Shakespeare\u2019s problematic play seizes on the original\u2019s framework \u2014 in which a group performs the play to Christopher Sly, a drunken tinker \u2014 to bring a potent contemporary twist to the drama\u2019s sexual politics.\u00a0Here, it\u2019s not a tinker but a sozzled punter (Nigel Barrett) who emerges noisily from the standing crowd to get dragged into the action. He begins by encouraging a singalong to Tom Jones\u2019s \u201cDelilah\u201d (clever move, getting the audience to enjoy a song about jealous murder) and harassing young women who are standing near the stage. One of them complains, receiving the classic \u201ccan\u2019t-you-take-a-joke\u201d dismissal \u2014 \u201cIn this country, we have a sense of humour!\u201d he bellows \u2014 at which point the watching onstage actors take it upon themselves to \u201ctreat\u201d this misogynist throwback to a comedy that will present him with the ugly end point of his logic.\u00a0In an age when we often hear about how feminism has gone too far, and when the likes of Andrew Tait are ragingly popular, this is smart. Christian plays the ensuing drama as a kind of patriarchal fever dream \u2014 a knockabout, carnivalesque comedy, part Punch and Judy, part Hieronymus Bosch, on a kindergarten set (design by Rosie Elnile) dominated by a giant, stuffed baby doll. The actors, dressed like cartoon versions of medieval mummers, somersault and caper, brandishing puppets and walloping each other with foam rollers. Sly either watches on the sidelines from a playpen, nursing his hangover, or joins the hurly-burly as one of Bianca\u2019s suitors.\u00a0It\u2019s bizarre in the extreme, but this is a take that leans hard into the comedy of the original, while at the same time emphasising the cruelties at its heart. They\u2019re at the heart of much physical comedy, too: when we first meet Petruchio he is bashing his servant, in line with many commedia dell\u2019arte characters and, indeed, much of the plot of Shakespeare\u2019s The Comedy of Errors. This begins amusing but turns sour as one thrashing becomes brutal.That young woman from the audience, meanwhile, finds herself pressed into action as Katharina, plunged into a mad world where her protests are met only with punishment. Christian creates a nightmarish dissonance between absurd comic mayhem and the ugly story that dominates the play. That line \u201cwe have a sense of humour\u201d echoes through the show.\u00a0\u00a0Even given the rationale, however, it soon feels like a long joke and the style begins to grate. The whole subplot, involving Katharina\u2019s sister Bianca (symbolically played by a puppet) and her multiple suitors, strains for effect, seems to drag on and has little impact: surrealism starts to get in the way of basic comprehension. The concept swamps everything else and by losing a specific social setting we lose some of the gravity of the entrenched attitudes on view.Amid all this, Andrew Leung\u2019s Petruchio is quietly very nasty \u2014 a smarmy, psychopathic little creep \u2014 and Thalissa Teixeira is excellent as Katharina, tracing a journey from bewilderment through horror to broken submission. Her final appearance, cowering and quaking, is pitiful: a stark contrast to the confident young woman we saw stride on to the stage. At one point she pleads with the audience to help her. She is trapped in a nightmare, the butt of a comedy that\u2019s no longer funny. It\u2019s a good argument, but one that\u2019s pushed too strenuously. However we try, it\u2019s still hard to tame The Taming of the Shrew.\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606\u2606To October 26, shakespearesglobe.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.While the Barbican\u2019s production of Kiss Me, Kate tackles The Taming of the Shrew with irony, Jude Christian\u2019s new staging of Shakespeare\u2019s problematic play seizes on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-131529","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131530,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131529\/revisions\/131530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}