Anne Tipton is a young director on the march. Since she won the James Menzies-Kitchin Award in 2004, there has been no stopping her. Her revival of Sarah Kane's Phaedra's Love transferred to the Barbican and now she gets a crack at Bristol's main stage. I'd lay a bet that Tipton is another Thea Sharrock in the making.
Shrew is Tipton's best work to date because she finds the emotional heart of the play. It would be very fine were it not three hours long, and if she curbed her enthusiasm for funny business - Petruchio's servants are like a plague of hobgoblins. It's also too flashy. Tipton has always been a stylish director, and here she is indulged in a design that makes Padua look like the interior of a dodgy Peter Stringfellow nightclub.
Tipton gives us the Christopher Sly induction that many dispense with, and develops the idea of play as performance, in which traditional roles are tipped upside down. This strand feels like a clever postgraduate thesis rather than a fully fledged theatrical exploration. But she makes up for it in the way she handles the relationship between Petruchio and Katharina.
As soon as you see Katharina, you know this is one deeply unhappy girl. Motherless, and ignored by a father who adores her sister, Bianca, Flora Montgomery's Kate is suffering from love deprivation. She is not so much a wildcat as a wounded one. When she claps eyes on Petruchio, it is as if she were a woman dying of thirst who spies an oasis in the desert. This oasis is no mirage: the chemistry between them is apparent from the start, and finds its expression in a sexually charged aggression. Richard Dillane's Petruchio is not a swaggering opportunist, but just what the doctor ordered.
In choosing him, Katharina chooses love over despair and, in the process, learns that you earn love and equality within a relationship. It is beautifully handled, with both actors playing superbly off each other. And it reaches a satisfying climax at the wedding feast, where newlyweds Lucentio and Bianca look like cats who have got the cream - only to discover that it has curdled.
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