DC Theatre Scene: A viscerally entertaining romp about a grieving woman tortured until she falls in love with her captor, Synetic’s wordless-Shakespeare adaptation of Taming of the Shrew is a quality showcase for the company’s famed high-energy theatrics. First produced in 2012, it returns to the stage with most of the original principal cast, a few updates to the creative team, and the same riot of colors and bodies.
2 comments:
This company does Shakespeare adaptations, the show is being performed under the title of The Taming of the Shrew (as an adaptation), but they are not actually saying the lines from the play. So how is it supposed to be approached? The critic writing this article is drawing comparing it to the Shakespeare’s work, the ongoing debate on how to handle misogyny in the play, and referencing the first production of this adaptation. All are fair to bring in as a critic, but as an audience member, what are you expected to know? Are you expected to know Shakespeare’s work because it’s Shakespeare or because you bought a ticket to a no-words adaption of a famous play? Do you need to be familiar with the original before seeing an adaptation? How much context and artist’s intents are given in the playbill for the audience?
My point is that if Synetic was working under the title of The Taming of the Shrew in order to credit the source of the plot, but never actually using any of the dialogue that leads to questions about misogyny and breaking her, then it is harder to fault them for how they treated those themes, because technically, they wouldn’t have introduced them. The critic mentioned how the aesthetics of the food spinning away could make you forget about the hunger and torture, make you forget to reference the original work. So for an audience member unfamiliar with the original, it may have just been a visually pleasing piece, superficial perhaps, but entertaining. Does choosing a work also mean accepting to take on the controversial themes? Is ignoring an author’s themes (as we have interpreted them) for easy entertainment any more objectionable than a director adapting a text to create a meaning outside of what the author originally wrote (such as if this play had been adapted for a feminist message).
I’ll beginning by stating that I really don’t Taming of the Shrew. When I first saw it on stage at a Shakespeare festival, it just left me frustrated and annoyed at the “love” story. But I don’t think I was mind seeing this version of it. I have a question though, so when the article says “wordless”, do they mean it is sort of like a Cirque du Soliel type of deal, where they have songs and performance pieces? Because I would go see it, not for the storyline, but for the intriguing costumes, media, lights, and performance pieces described in the article. Though, I do feel like if you were to do a Shakespeare play and just put a bunch of performance pieces in it, then why Taming of the shrew? Maybe it was so that the audience can take home multiple perspectives and meanings from the show. Like the last paragraphs said in the article, maybe one will just focus on design and the different pieces, or maybe one will focus on the storyline and the struggle of “love” or maybe someone else will combine both? At least for me, and for my dislike, I will focus on the pieces and maybe look at how they effect the actual storyline, but not a lot.
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