How direct is the relationship between Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ and Commedia dell’Arte? Probably the funniest production of Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew you will ever see harks back to 1976 in a production by the American Conservatory Theatre directed by William Ball & Kirk Browning…

This hidden gem on YouTube shows us a young and radiant Meryl Streep as Kate and a sexy Raul Julia in ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ 1970s style. The research for one of my projects is finding and watching a wide range of productions of Shakespeare’s plays and one of…

What would a modern Italian take on Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ look like? The trope of a bad-tempered woman who needs to be tamed by a strong man was part of the folk culture long before it entered the literary realm in Shakespeare’s play, The Taming of the…

How well do modern adaptations of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ keep faith with both our feminist values and Shakespeare’s text? As one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, and one that anticipated the romantic comedy, one of our most popular film genres, it is not surprising that The Taming of…

How does a director present ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ to a post-feminist audience? A romantic romp that has always been a favourite with audiences, The Taming of the Shrew anticipates many of the tropes of the modern romantic comedy. Despite its popularity, however, it has always been seen as…

A quick guide for students and teachers to where to find filmed versions of Shakespeare’s plays on DVD and to stream. The best way to enjoy a Shakespeare play is in the theatre, just as Shakespeare meant us to. However, a live production is not always at hand when you…

A young girl is in terrible distress and Mrs Graham won’t let Marilyn rest until she’s found her. The phone shattered Marilyn’s sleep. Groaning, she twisted her head to see the time. 3:48am. She’d been asleep for less than an hour after coming in from a double shift. …

A late-night fare brings closure for an unhappy taxi driver. It’s funny the things you think about when you’re sitting on a taxi rank at two in the morning. Things like: where you’d go. In a park maybe, or some scrappy piece of ground behind an industrial estate. What sort…

It was a mundane interview for a mundane story, but it would draw him deep into the darkness. Yellow. Yellow and fear. Suffocating fear. Suffocating. The dreamer woke with a jolt, sweating, heart pounding. He turned, folded up and groaned. ‘Haven’t had enough.’ …