Rima Te Wiata
Dunedin theatre
The taming of Rima
by Anna Chinn
THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, by William Shakespeare; directed by Martin Howells, Fortune Theatre; THE RIVALS, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan; directed by David Corballis, Globe Theatre.
The latest in Fortune artistic director Martin Howells’s bombardment of Dunedin with boys’ plays, The Taming of the Shrew is set in Central Otago. Ross Gumbley as Petruchio, a Southern man, soon tamed this reviewer. He brought a mighty intelligence to the role, and his gradual conversion from macho to mushy was superbly timed.
Rima Te Wiata played the shrew. Her submission seemed a tad premature – but perhaps I just wanted her hilarious pug-dog aggressiveness to be unabated. She delivered the “let hubby trample thy hands” speech with a sincerity that was potent ammunition for Howells’s surprise ending. There were 11 other actors, who had mostly learnt their lines. Peter King’s set was both aesthetic and practical, with a reconfigurable house parked in a Grahame Sydney-type landscape. Nice if there could have been more shrews trampling it.
Brinsley Sheridan’s The Rivals was written in 1775, so picture lace-trimmed men, false-hipped women; beauty spots, stockings and white wigs everywhere. The era also suggests a script that is sentimental, moralising, and out of print – but thankfully, The Rivals is none of these. David Corballis’s production was a sterling revival of a classic comedy.
The plot goes: three blokes want to marry Lydia; her aunt’s choice being Captain Absolute. Lydia, however, plans to elope with her beau, Ensign Beverley, who is really Absolute acting below his station to woo her. As Lydia says, “How charming will poverty be with him!” Everyone has their own ideas about what would be charming, and mayhem follows.
Terry MacTavish played Lydia’s absurd aunt, Mrs Malaprop (hence malapropism), and was the very … pineapple of perfection in the role. The merest flick of her fan, and the audience fluttered. Other casting highlights included Andrew Gillespie, convincing in a pickle of Absolute duplicity; Tommo Cuthbert-Ashmore, controlling the “eccentric planet” that was suitor Mr Acres, and Helen Prior, as an enchantingly wilful Lydia.
The subplot involving lovers Faulkland (Peter Coates) and Julia (Natalie Milne) will always be boring, but in this production was made bearable by the players’ confidence, and by the fact that Corballis axed a sceneful of their drivel. Complete with a voluptuous neo-classical set, this show, while it lasted, was a worthy rival for the Shrew.
