His Majesty’s Theatre, Perth
September
Based on Shakespeare’s comedy of the same name, John Cranko’s The Taming of the Shrew was created for Stuttgart Ballet in 1969 and first seen in Australia in 1974, featuring Marcia Haydée and Richard Cragun as Kate and Petruchio. The Australian Ballet also performed it in 1986 and the West Australian Ballet first performed it in 2008.
Set in Renaissance Italy, the music was arranged and orchestrated by Kurt-Heinz Stolze from manuscripts of sonatas by Baroque composer Domenico Scarlatti.
On opening night, an energetically played overture from the WA Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Myron Romanul, set the musical tone and the curtain rose to reveal an evening street scene outside the Padua house of wealthy Baptista (Milos Mutavdzic), father of the “shrew” Kate and her younger sister Bianca.
It soon becomes apparent that Shakespeare’s witty dialogue and narrative subtleties are to be conveyed in idiosyncratic movement and dance forms and played in a broad, almost pantomime-like style. The foppish Hortensio (an attractive, elastic Yann Laine), the elderly roué Gremio (a scene-stealing Andre Santos) and the student Lucentio (an elegant Daryl Brandwood) woo Bianca (a sweet, neat and petite Sarah Sutcliffe) and entertain the audience with their antics. The suitors band together to find a husband for Kate as Bianca cannot be married before her older sister. They persuade a drunken Petruchio (guest artist Filip Barankiewicz) to court her.
Kate’s (performed by Jayne Smeulders) frenzied first entrance interrupts the wooing as Smeulders throws herself into jumps, turns, foot stamping and flailing. Petruchio appears undeterred. Long-limbed Barankiewicz seemed a little cramped for space on His Majesty’s Theatre stage but his rakish grin and brilliant leaping win Kate over and, despite being manhandled, kissed and teased in the first of three lengthy pas de deux, she surprisingly stops resisting and agrees to be married to him.
Kate and Petruchio’s wedding becomes a fiasco with some very odd behaviour by Petruchio and is played out as broad farce and with much hilarity. And while the rather dissonant musical score effectively reflected Kate’s shrewishness and the discord of Kate and Petruchio’s courtship, it doesn’ always serve the dynamics of the action. Barankiewicz’s triple tours notwithstanding, the lack of subtlety in some of the staging begins to grate.
Act 2 begins with Kate and Petruchio journeying on horseback to Petruchio’s house. Smeulders performs some very funny, almost gymnastic feats around the steed before she is subjected to further harsh treatment by her husband, portrayed in comic style. They perform a second lengthy and confrontational duet with deceptive ease, ending in Kate’s total capitulation.
Bianca chooses Lucentio and the unfortunate Hortensio and Gremio are flattered (and later tricked into marriage) by two street girls (Brooke Widdison-Jacobs and Jennifer Provins) who, it must be said, danced assuredly but in characterisation bore a strong resemblance to the two step-sisters from Cinderella performed earlier in the year.
Bianca and Lucentio celebrate their own wedding and Sutcliffe and Brandwood are beautifully matched in their lyrical pas de deux. The ensemble dances, while not technically demanding, were all performed with great precision and in a lively, engaging style by the company augmented by students from the WA Academy of Performing Arts.
Kate and Petruchio’s final rapturous pas de deux and its incredibly challenging partnering becomes a meeting of hearts, minds and bodies. This is about “love” rather than “taming”, and love, it is suggested, has tamed them both. Smeulders is an excellent performer with a strong stage presence, a pliant upper body, secure turns and great elevation. She makes an admirable Kate. She and Barankiewicz, a first-class dancer and a skilful partner, work well together, with consistently clean lifts and a visible rapport.
Cranko’s Shrew is beginning to show her age but the audience on opening night received it enthusiastically, love was in the air, and in the Bard’s own words: “All’s Well that Ends Well.”
- MARGARET MERCER
'The Taming of the Shrew' runs till September 24.