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Great Film overall

It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

The ProductionThe BBC produced all of Shakespeare's plays in the years around 1980 in the vein of the old 'filmed theatre' school. That is to say that the cinematography is not lush, the costumes are not impressive, the sets do not evoke a sense of realism, but the acting and the direction of the actors are at centre stage.Directed by Jonathan Miller, their Taming of the Shrew is populated by well-meaning actors who ranged from quite good – such as Anthony Pedley as the servant of young Luciano – to the merely average – such as Susan Penhaligon's Bianca.But overshadowing them all is a surprising performer in this context, the performance of whom is the key to Jonathan Miller's solution to the problem of how to film a play, that basically condones domestic violence and makes light of it: John Cleese as Petruchio.The CleeseCleese brings a quality to the boisterous role of the gentleman from Verona that it is frankly astonishing for whoever discovered it in the text to have found, and which demonstrates the range of Shakespeare's play. Where Petruchio is traditionally seen as a staunch defender of the status quo as regards to gender roles, Cleese shows him to be a quiet rebel and a person with a knack for noticing absurdity and hostility in the world and trying to make the best of it.While most productions have Petruchio dominating Kate at the end, it is obvious from the performances that such is not the case here. Rather the two have developed an understanding and an actual respect for each other.Indeed while many times the most poignant scenes for Petruchio are made out to be his battles of wit and violence with Kate, it is obvious that Cleese and the production considers the pivotal scene to be his short, poetic soliloquy at the end of act 4, scene 1.Delivered by candlelight after an exhausting day, Cleese wearily speaks the words that lesser Petruchios would be bolstering all over the place. Quietly and calmly, he outlines his plan with a tonality in his voice like that of a man who meticulously chooses exactly the most absurd response to any stimuli simply to prove a point. It is not that he must decide everything for Kate, however, but simply and reasonably that they cannot function as a married couple if they fight about everything. Thus he meets her irrational demands not with demands of his own, but instead with well-designed, absurd responses.Rather than admonish her for being wilful or engaging in a misogynist battle of the sexes, Cleese's Petruchio is on a mission to show Kate that her wilfulness simply will not do, because it is not possible for people to live like that. He demands not compliance from Kate because he wants it, but because he wants to show what she is demanding from the world.The ShrewQuite apart from the dismal message that productions of The Taming of the Shrew usually have to contend with, the message of this production is instead that we are not set in our ways and that we can change our nature if we work at it. All of this hinges of course not just on the performance of Cleese, but also on the wonderfully faceted performance of Sarah Badel in the role of Kate. She starts out in the proud tradition from Elizabeth Taylor's version in Zefirellis production from the 60s, portraying Kate as essentially a spoilt child who rebels without any sense of direction. It is clear that she finds the demands of society idiotic and inconvenient, but she does not try to change them, she just acts out her rage very much like a child would.As she struggles to comprehend Petruchio's outlandish behaviour, we see that Badel – unlike Taylor – actually uses this character choice moving forward. This is not so much a taming as a maturing of the shrew, as Kate grows up. Petruchio is holding up a mirror in front of her and like a child she at first does not recognise that it is herself she's seeing. It seems to her that Petruchio is just one more instance of a world being unreasonable, harsh and repressive, but gradually Badel shows us Kate coming to grips with the fact that the person in the mirror is her. Like a child finally recognising herself in the mirror and not attempting to play with this new friend anymore, Kate grows up and becomes a reasonable person. She learns, and we learn with her, that the proper response to an unfair world is not blind rage, disgust and self pity, but instead reason and thought. Reportedly Jonathan Miller had problems with persuading Cleese to act in this, the first Shakespeare production the comedian did. It is fortunate that he was successful, though. Although we cannot in good conscience acquit Shakespeare himself or his contemporaries of misogyny, we can however – with this production in hand – show that the text must not necessarily be interpreted thus.And this is really the most we can hope for in a performance: to show us things about the text that we had not considered.(This is a shortened version of the review posted at shakespearereviews.wordpress.com)

This "The Taming of the Shrew" directed by Jonathan Miller and starring John Cleese is probably as good as we'll ever get.William Ball's 1976 commedia dell'arte version with Marc Singer (shown on "Great Performances" and available on DVD) is fun, but perhaps too freewheeling. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Franco Zeffirelli's 1967 Taylor/Burton film is no fun at all.Miller and his excellent cast seem to hit the right note. A few of the actors do fall into that Shakespearean trap of reciting their lines as if they're in a race to finish, rather than speaking them normally. Most of the actors do a good job.The major flaw in this "Shrew" is that it abandons the Christopher Sly framing device, without which the play becomes impossible to understand. I suppose the Sly device tends to make the play-within-a-play a silly entertainment that cannot be taken seriously, while Miller's intentions seem to be to present the characters as real and believable as possible. Cleese's Petruchio comes off as thoughtful and heartfelt, while the Sly device perhaps forces a rambunctious, over-the-top performance, a la Marc Singer. It strikes me as curious that this "Shrew" can be presented as near-letter-perfect Shakespeare without Sly.Nevertheless, it's as good as possible, I suppose.

Baptista will not allow his saccharine younger daughter Bianca to marry until someone can rid him of his obstreperous older daughter Katherine. The swaggering Petruchio (John Cleese), eager to wive it wealthily in Padua, agrees to do just this. He proceeds to break her. First, he cools her scalding wit by putting his tongue in her tale; nearly jilts her on her wedding night and then shows up at the church in antic garb; forbids her food, sleep and the beautiful clothes he himself had tailored for her, all on the pretense of providing for her; and lastly, commands that she call the sun the moon, the moon the sun, an elderly gentlemen a fresh virgin and then refute her own assertions, all according to his whim.That's the main plot, and simple enough. The other plot is a headache. Bianca has three suitors: the gray-bearded Gremio, the youngish Hortensio and the young and handsome Lucentio. Don't ask why, but Lucentio disguises himself as a tutor named Cambio. Hortensio disguises himself as a tutor named Litio. Tranio, Lucentio's servant, disguises himself as Lucentio, at Lucentio's request. A traveling pedant disguises himself as Vincentio, Lucentio's father, also at Luciento's request. Later, the real Vincentio shows up. This proves to be more enjoyable in performance than on the page, but it's still confusing.This production is a typical one of the BBC series, "The Complete Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare." Great actors. Poor production values. Bad staging for the cameras. (Note how often we feel we should be seeing one actor's reaction to something when he's off camera or turned away. Note how an entrance of Kate, muddy and disheveled, is botched: the camera takes little note of it until it's too late to make an impression.) Did I mention great actors? They make all the difference in most of these productions. Derek Jacobi is a splendid Richard II. Bob Hoskins is my favorite Iago. George Costigan is a fascinating Bastard Faulconbridge.So what about John Cleese as Petruchio? Cleese, one of the great comic actors, fails at this role. He seems to nibble around the edge of the part, rather than directly attack it. His Petruchio has no real confidence underlying his swagger. He's neurotic; and his antic disposition seems less put-upon than real. In an early scene where he matches wits with Kate, he plays it like a schoolboy, acting cocky and making weird noises to cover up how nervous he is.The rest of the cast is fine. Sarah Badel plays Kate in an exaggerated manner without making her seem like a cartoon. She handles the last scene especially well, making it clear she's been tamed, not broken. I liked how John Franklyn-Robbins has his Baptista explode into exultant laughter at odd times. Jonathan Cecil is an amusingly prissy Hortensio. The reliable Anthony Pedley plays Tranio. Simon Chandler is acceptable as Lucentio, despite his unintelligible recitation in the opening scene. I also liked that blubbering elderly servant, whoever he is.I'd rather watch this again than the well-produced, well-acted but exhaustingly frantic and slapsticky version with Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. But this is still not all that good.

A funny, fast-paced and thoroughly enjoyable production. All the actors are clear and well-spoken. They all add funny little unspoken touches to their lines, Cleese especially, so that there's a lot of physical comedy going on while the fast dialogue is crackling. A lot of talent went into this show, and it pays off.