Shrew colours: All-female cast's new take on Shakespeare
Shakespeare's comedy about a gender power struggle is considered misogynistic, but an all-female cast offers a different perspective, writes Robin Lynam
TO BORROW A LINE from King Lear, “The wheel is come full circle” with Shakespeare’s Globe’s production of The Taming of the Shrew, which plays at the Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts later this month.
Like all Shakespeare’s plays, The Shrew was originally performed by an all male cast; women were forbidden by law to perform on stage in England until 1660, 44 years after Shakespeare’s death.
The Globe’s production is a singlegender production, too – but this time, the cast is all female.
Surprisingly, for what is often characterised as a chauvinist, even misogynistic play, this approach has been taken before, as director Joe Murphy explains.
“The Globe did an [all-female] production in about 2003, but with a cast of 16, and just at The Globe. We’ve got eight women going around the world, so it’s very different in energy and style,” he explains.
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London is an approximate reconstruction of the original, which was built by Shakespeare’s playing company The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, and in which the bard himself owned a part share. It’s based on a theatre which stood on the same site from 1599 to 1613. The new theatre opened in 1997, after a project to rebuild it was instigated by Sam Wanamaker, an American actor and director.