What are we to do with The Taming of Shrew? Directors have turned it inside out in the quest to make its misogyny more palatable. There have been all-male and all-female versions, and perhaps, most successfully, productions that have suggested that Katherina and Petruchio are both damaged offspring of dysfunctional families who save themselves through discovering each other.
Nick Hutchinson's production has an awful lot going for it. It is neatly spoken and acted with real flourish by a mixture of young and veteran actors, such as Philip Voss as Baptista - a widower unable to cope with looking after his two daughters - and Adrian Schiller, who lends Grumio an infinitely watchable air of lugubrious menace.
But, although the surroundings of Wilton's Music Hall are full of grace, and Annie Gosney's simple design makes the most of that, the play still comes across as a charmless affair. This is a production that is easy to admire, but harder to like.
The question is whether it is possible to stage the play - as Hutchinson appears to do - without reference to its dubious sexual politics. It certainly makes for an uncomfortable comedy.
The problem is certainly not with Rachael Stirling's Katherina, a young woman whose emotional neediness is apparent in every move she makes. There is a wonderful, tiny, telling moment when this Katherina begins to shiver uncontrollably when she is trying to talk to a father who won't listen to her. Stirling's performance has both strength and sweetness, as well as an appealing directness. But why on earth does she fall for Oliver Chris's Petruchio? Director Hutchinson and actor Chris (who doubles here as Christopher Sly in the prologue) allow Petruchio to have his cake and eat it. On one hand, it is made clear that Petruchio is a fortune hunter, but on the other, Chris plays him as a traditional Mills and Boon hero, tall, square-jawed and with a snappy suit. The result is really rather creepy and one which begins to look like the systematic psychological abuse of a young wife by her husband as the men look on in fascinated admiration.
If you can smother all feminist sensibilities, this production has plenty of dash, but it's a while since I have seen a Shrew that stuck in my throat quite so painfully.
· Until April 28. Box office: 020-7702 2789
