Shakespeares The Taming of the Shrew recorded live and performed by the Royal shakespeare Company 2019

runime   2 hrs 38 mins                  Spoken in Shakespeare's English  
                                      No Subtitles for this performance

IMDb  tt9030400

Synopsis of the play

In a reimagined 1590, society is a matriarchy.

Baptista Minola is seeking to sell off her son Katherine to the highest bidder. Cue an explosive battle of the sexes in this electrically charged love story.

Justin Audibert (Snow in Midsummer, The Jew of Malta) turns Shakespeare's fierce, energetic comedy of gender and materialism on its head to offer a fresh perspective on its portrayal of hierarchy and power.

Cast and creatives

Directed for the stage by  Justin Audibert
directed for the screen by  Briget Caldwell

Cast

Baptista Minola                         Amanda Harris
Katherine                               Joseph Arkley
Bianco                                  James Cooney
Petruchia                               Clare Price
Hortensia                               Amelia Donkor
Gremia                                  Sophie Stanton
Trania                                  Laura Elsworthy
Grumio                                  Richard Clews

complete cast and creatives in the credit roll

My notes

  Access to these theatrical performances released to theatres has gotten better recently with
many releases to the file shares.  Mine are recodes of much larger files available from torrent sources.  They have some new editing and often audio editing as well.

 In this performance of Taming I made the mistake of trying to compare it with the superb
"Taming of the Shrew" at the Globe with Simon Paisely Day and Samantha Spiro  That is also on the file shares in the indexes where I did the original rip and have had going for years.

 But here there are gender changes introduced by the director.  In viewing the play with this
new cast brings new perspective in much the same way that recent treatments of Twelfth Night have in the nature of the cruel joke and the victim of that joke.

I started to think of the recent "Julius Caesar" with Harriet Walter performed in modern dress and set in a prison as well.  The style is different but the viewer has to bring the same open mindedness to the performance.  And there is a recent Hamlet played by Maxine Peake at the Royal Exchange Theatre as well.  All of these are available on the torrent indexes.  Some have come into availability as DVD for libraries and schools to get acquire for many more to enjoy.

Notes written  November 7th 2019