If you’re not a fan of audience participation, this show is probably best avoided. The cast mingle with the audience queuing up outside the theatre to get in and once inside anyone sat in the first few rows is seen as fair game for some friendly – and risque – banter from members of the Bella’s Club. With the cast dressed in outrageous attire costumes and a burlesque pole taking centre stage, we can see that the shock troops of drama have arrived: this is basque country.
With gender-swapping roles and a rich takedown of toxic masculinity, this sly adaptation of Shakespeare’s tale is shrewdly upturned to reveal the misogyny and thrusting violence of its male characters.
Of course, as this is burlesque we have to have extravagant numbers and Her Productions doesn’t fail to deliver, the first salvo being a raucous introduction by each member of the cast in turn mocking male lust and braggadocio.
As with any Shakespeare plot, it takes a while for the story to settle down and decide on its main theme: that wild at heart Kate and her sister Bianca are to be married off by their father Baptista and ‘tamed’, who is inveigled by a troop of suitors into agreeing to give away his daughters. We get a glimpse of Kate’s tempestuous character when she is first courted by Petruchio – in their verbal jousting she is as quick-witted and savage as her rival. Kate – or Katerina – is brilliantly played by Mia Gibson who gives us a full flavour of her chaving against male dominance.
Ciara Tansey in drawn-on moustache gives us a Petruchio pumped full of bombastic self-importance, sure of his own allure and self-importance. She brings a knowing comic touch to the role, reducing him to a figure of fun as much as he wants to be taken seriously as the male overlord.
The versatility of the cast is astonishing and it’s clear the production is driven by a desire to upend long-cherished values now seen to be rotten at the core. Sarah Legg is Gremio, a doddering old fool who sees himself in with a chance to marry Bianca against the younger advances of Hortensio. Legg gives us a Gremio straight out of the Fast Show, high-class slurring vowels and misplaced self-confidence in what is a fantastic performance.
Other roles are taken up with whirlwind gusto by Ocean Cage, Emily Spowage, Hope Yolanda, Shady Murphy, Nicole Keri, Megan Holland, Mia Gibson, Naoim Albans, Jakki Moore and Leah Eddleston.
‘Kiss me, Kate’, says the self-absorbed Petruchio sure of his own attractiveness to women yet sure to fall prey to his own vanity in the end.
A show not for the fainthearted.
The Taming of the Shrew is at Home, Manchester from 27-31 May 2025.