|
Shakespeare, style and theatrical truth |
|
|
|
Monday, 21 January 2008 |
Korsunovas’s production of La Mégère apprivoisée at the Comédie-Française.
Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the
Shrew’ has just entered the repertoire
of the Comédie-Française as the
Lithuanian director Oskaras
Korsunovas’s production of ‘La Mégère
Apprivoisée’ in French translation by
François-Victor Hugo. It is an exciting
production that takes a fresh look at the
play, at Shakespeare, and at theatrical
style and truth. ‘The Taming of the
Shrew’ is not generally pleasing to
women since Catharina, the so-called
shrew, or unruly woman, is insulted and
ill-treated into submission by her macho
suitor and husband Petruchio. But as
Korsunovas points out, this has become
a dated conception of the comedy which,
to be fully enjoyed, must be taken in its
entirety as pure theatre. He views
Shakespearean drama as total theatre,
and has taken it upon himself to create a
kind of supra-reality in his ‘Shrew’.
Unlike many directors, Korsunovas
has included the Christopher Sly
prologue to the play: Sly, a drunken
tramp, is taken in by a lord and his
followers, who persuade him that he is a
lord and perform the play just for him.
Catharina and Petruchio’s story becomes
a play within a play.
The opening scene is reminiscent of
a charnel house, with a backdrop of
skulls and the lord’s followers as skeletal
hounds. The backdrop remains visible
throughout, even when raised to reveal a
narrow stage with the trappings of
backstage theatre: wardrobe rails loaded
with costumes, a shelf of wig blocks.
The forestage is defined by a wall of
mirrored panels which become part of
the action as they are manipulated by the
actors to reflect the characters, the action
and the audience: all very clever devices
that establish a kind of neo-brechtian
meta-text about art as a series of mirrors
reflecting society, different states of
consciousness, life and death.
This is, of course, a path that leads to
the centre of Shakespeare’s theatre, in all
his bright comedies. The conventions
that Shakespeare chose are multiple:
Petruchio’s reversal of reality that leads
to the madness of him and Kate falling
in love, the Lucentio/Tranio role switch
in the wooing of Bianca and numerous
other disguises. Korsunovas reverses
appearances throughout, creating mirror
images out of the sheer physicality of the
action, and using movement, mime and
dance as much as speech. Petruchio and
Grumio do a double act, and the meek
Bianca is played more as a conventional
shrew than Catharina. The story is acted
as a mirror of convention in which a
woman exists only as an object to be
acquired by the highest bidder. This is
treated by the production as a social
reality that leaves Catharina isolated, a
loneliness that is transcended by the
ultimate theatrical truth of love, where
the obedient wife is transformed from
black-clad goth to Elizabethan Gloriana.
So Shakespeare is not lost in
Korsunovas’s idea of total theatre and
symbolic higher reality. The text is not
drowned, and the poetic quality of the
French translation resists all the liberties
taken by the director. The physical
presence and vocal skills of the actors
operate on a level of equal importance to
the outer trappings of costumeand
scenry. There are some very fine
performances, with Françoise Gillard as
Catharina, Loïc Corbery as Petruchio
and an excellent Lucentio/Tranio double
act by Laurent Natrella and Pierre Louis-
Calixte.
The production will run in repertory
until July.
Comédie-Française: 02 85 10 16 80
|
