What I especially love about that Taming of the Shrew is that it's really a love story. As you say, most of the time in Shakespeare comedy, the woman teaches the man how to be a better person. This is really the one time that it's in reverse. I've never seen a clearer or more satisfying production of the play. Sharry Flett is a wonderful Kate, and the wooing scene is, as you say, incredibly funny. And they are great together in the sun and moon and budding virgin scene. The production predates Jonathan Miller's Subsequent Performances analysis of the play, but it reflects the same view of the play. And it's better than the Miller TV production.
And, yes, it's incredibly moving when Cariou's vengeful and neurotic Prospero responds to Ariel's "Mine would, sir, were I human" with "And mine shall." And that's due in part to Ian Deakin's Ariel, and the relationship that Ariel and Prospero have in that production.
Jones was my first Lear, I saw him twice, and I still like him, but I do wish he'd done it again later. And I wish I'd gotten to see Cariou one of the two times he played it. And i wish I could go back in time to see Louis Calhern, Morris Carnovsky (but not his last one), Lee J. Cobb, Paul Scofield, one of Gielgud's several (although perhaps not the weird one with the Noguchi-derived designs) and . . . a bunch of others, including Donald Wolfit's.
Kline is far from my favorite Hamlet, but I only saw him in the television production. There have been a lot of very good Hamlets. |
