THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

Along with the Bard’s dramatic opus, Hamlet, The Taming Of The Shrew is this year’s offering at the annual Sydney Shakespeare Festival staged out in the open at Glebe’s Bicentennial Park. Petruchio (John Michael Burdon), an arrogant, self-assured gentleman, is charged with wooing and subduing feisty, precocious firecracker Katherina (Christina Falsone) so that a bevy of other gentle sirs can have a go at her fairer and much more pliable younger sister Bianca (Nicole Wineberg). There are tantrums, a forced marriage, deception and, ultimately, farce and hilarity.

Underneath all that, however, there is an undercurrent of misogyny and submission, and an exploration of gender roles that makes this play both painfully outdated and surprisingly current. Despite the incongruous costume and set choices – the op shop feel perhaps a nod to the essence of the inner west – the cast skilfully manages to imbue a sense of comedy and suspense into a 400-year-old piece of writing. In the end, the real winner is the person, presumably festival co-founder and artistic director Julie Baz, who picked the location. Sitting on a rug under the stars with the backdrop of the Anzac Bridge watching actors bring a play to life with nothing but a small stage and their voices is what theatre is all about.

Until Feb 12, Bicentennial Park, Glebe Foreshore, $23-29, sydneyshakespearefestival.com.au