Friday night, after work, after after-work drinks, what to do? Well, tonight at least, the answer was: go to the Melbourne University Shakespeare Company's first production, a lively, colourful and fun "The Taming of the Shrew"; I'm not familiar with the play (nor were Swee Leng or Meribah, initiator and fellow last minute companion respectively), but I don't think my enjoyment was much diminished by that deficiency. It was heaps of fun - very energetic (both in terms of script and in terms of the players' performances) and plenty irreverent, the snatches of pop music and occasional interpolated contemporary references being only part of the general attitude (as one would expect of student theatre done well), not to mention the 'look behind you!' moment when Gremio is addressing the audience.
Liked the way that each character (and, in some cases, pairing/group) had its own colour or colour scheme - gave it a bit of an 8 Femmes vibe - and the backdrops and props were cute, simple and effective. Especially liked Julia Harari's turn as a minx-like, attractively flouncy Katerina (the titular shrew), all pouts and tongues pushed into cheeks and sidelong smiles, and Paul Carnell as the endlessly smiling and even more flouncy Lucentio, but all were good and there were no jarring moments or instances of misjudged overacting/mugging. Program says that a bit of John Fletcher's "The Tamer Tamed" was inserted into the text; I'm guessing that most if not all of that comes at the end, with Katerina's monologue about equality of the sexes (if not, the director of this production must have written that speech, unless I severely miss my guess - and misremember my Shakespeare).
Oh yes, it was also funny (as in laugh-out-loud), and the - oh, I don't know - 30-odd? who turned up for the show laughed plenty, me included. And it was one of those occasions where, even when you weren't actually laughing, there was a smile on your face most of the time - induced by the dialogue, the characters' interactions, and all that. We were in the second row and so were ideally placed - v. glad to've gone along and will try to make it to future ones (if any).
