BWW Interviews: British Propeller's TAMING OF THE SHREW Actors Dish on Shakespeare and Minneapolis (Part Two)

British theatre troupe Propeller is presenting Taming of the Shrew in repertory with Twelfth Night at the Guthrie Theater through April 6. While the company is traveling around the world for 10 months performing in such spots as Spain, Germany, Italy and France, they came to their longest run of any city in Minneapolis via a stop in Michigan and will return to England before heading to Italy next month.

Two of the 14 actors in the company sat down with me one recent afternoon to talk about Minneapolis, Shrew and Shakespeare. Vince Leigh plays Christopher Sly/Petruchio and Dan Wheeler plays Katherine in this all-male production. This is the second of two parts.

Do you feel that men playing women changes the dynamic? Have you ever played this show with women in the parts?

Vince: I think it changes vastly. A typical example, we did Midsummer Night's Dream, there's the scene in the forest with the four lovers and the way we did it was with 20 minutes of sheer physical violence, and we beat each other and it was hysterically funny. But there's no way we'd been able to do that. In the same way if I was playing Petruchio in this production with this take on it, I wouldn't be able to treat an actress, just as a human, like I treat Dan; there would be a barrier. I wouldn't either. Even if you said, "Don't be stupid," and the actress said "Just treat me like you would," I wouldn't be able to do it. There would be something stopping me. And I think it would also make it more difficult on the audience. Because then there is a physical imbalance.

Dan: I think it's quite important that the audience do laugh early on, even just before it gets to what you would call abuse, when they're sort of throwing each other around a bit. Because I think the audience identifies with Petruchio early on. He's very funny. He's a little bit wittier than her, he is able to put her down. He's very charismatic and very funny. You do a reasonable job with that. (laughter) And then it makes the audience ask more questions later on -- why do I like this guy? You know, this happens in society, doesn't it? People almost forgive men who are in abusive relationships if they're funny and charismatic.You only have to look at the news recently to see people trying to make excuses because they're promising young football stars, as if that's got anything to do with the fact that they committed a terrible crime. So I think it helps if people can laugh at the beginning. I think the fact that we're both men helps them laugh, if that makes sense.

Yes, Petruchio is a cad and he's awful but he's also charming and funny so you want to see what he'll do next.

Dan: Yes, exactly. Where do you draw the line, when do you stop laughing. It's very interesting to feel the audience gradually stop laughing and see who laughs the longest. You think, "You've got issues. Your limits are way out."

Vince: Did you see the show last night? It was quite uncomfortable really because there was a girl in the front row, right in the corner, who, all during his speech, she was leaning forward, almost on set. She wasn't emotive but she was just in floods of tears.

Did that affect your performance?

Dan: I'm so glad I didn't see it.

Vince: I was staring directly at her wondering "Why are you crying?"

Dan: But you'd be amazed at how long some people laugh. I don't know if it's because they've seen a production before and they think it ought to be funny, or whether they genuinely do think it funny, or whether it's nervous laughter. That's one of the most interesting things for me.

Vince: Weirdly, with this production, it tends to be the older men who object to it. Mostly women go with it. Occasionally men get really, really grumpy.

Dan: I wonder whether it's showing them something about themselves or something about society they don't want to acknowledge.

Is there a point when most audiences hit that, or does it vary night to night?

Dan: It really varies. Sometimes we've still got people chuckling a bit at the beginning of my speech right at the end. And sometimes we have huge laughter all the way through the sun and the moon scene. And sometimes it sort of ends at the end of the first half and doesn't really come back. Obviously you've got a whole different storyline with Bianca and her suitors -- that's funny throughout. So that always brings people back. It's important to give people that relief, otherwise it's just a bit heavy.

Are the music and other modern touches something your company always put in your shows?

Vince: Yeah. (Director Ed Hall) is a fantastic director of men and a director of people, and of individuals. And he chooses people; he doesn't audition people the normal way. He picks people who he's seen their work.

Dan: He auditioned me in the normal way.

Vince: Did he? (laughs) Did he see your work? ?

Dan: No.

Vince: Then that's why! (laughs) But generally, he sort of puts people together. Then his big passion is the text. He's absolutely strict on the text. We do text work all the time. The rest of it -- the theatricality -- he sort of allows us freedom to come up with ideas. So when he's not working on text, he'll say to other people, "We need a transition from there to there, a song there, or we need something. Just go away and talk about it. And come back." Did he ever ask you if you played instruments?

Dan: Yes, but I think that's not necessarily the case; he doesn't cast people because they're musicians but if they are musicians, he then tries to make it possible for them to use that skill.

Vince: Over the years, we've acquired a lot of instruments. So our rehearsal period, rehearsal process... ?

Dan: Is noisy.

Vince: Is noisy and fun and it's like a bachelor playground. There are balls and electric guitars...

So the music is very organic to your shows?

Dan: Yes, organic. Exactly. Nothing is imposed. I think that's the key to Propeller shows. Nothing is imposed, so if you come and see something and think, well, that's very modern. That's a very modern way of interpreting that scene. The interpretation hasn't been decided in advance. It's more a case of, if this play was written today, how would this scene take place? For example, in Twelfth Night, there's a fight, which, I think, as written, was a fencing match between two characters. That would've been very appropriate in Shakespeare's day because that's how people settled disputes, would've been used to fencing. Nowadays fencing just says Olympics. I mean, no one fences, really. Well maybe they do a bit more in the states but it's certainly not something people are used to, so we have a boxing match instead. But we didn't decide, "Wouldn't it be fun to have a boxing match?" It was, "Wouldn't it be boring to have a fencing match?" It would be kind of anachronistic.

Vince: We ask how else can we do it?

Dan: What we always say is that these aren't old plays. When they were written they were incredibly new so we don't present them as a history lesson. We present them as new, fresh plays. And by keeping all the text exactly as it was written, we're saying, "How can we interpret this today?" In Shakespeare's day if they'd had electic guitars, I'm sure he would've had electric guitars in his play.

Vince: We used "All the Single Ladies" in last year's A Winter's Tale. That whole dance routine. (singing) "All the single ladies!" Fantastic.

Dan: His plays are full of cultural references.Little in jokes that don't make any sense now. So when, in Twelfth Night, Antonia tells Sebastian to meet her at the Elephant; they go on and on about meeting at the Elephant, which is a pub in London, the best guess about what the Elephant was is a little bit of product placement. Or an in joke about how particularly bad or particularly good pub or inn.

Vince: When we opened Twelfth Night, I had a bit of Gangnam Style and it worked brilliantly for about three weeks. And then one day, it just stopped being funny. Then you get to the Harlem Shake. Modern references... what's funny today?

Dan: I don't know what's funny. (laughs) I think that's the important thing. If people want to go and see Shakespeare as a history lesson, there are other companies that do that very well. The Globe in London. But that's not what we do; we're not giving a history lesson, we're telling a story in a fun way. A very true way, I think.

What about the costumes? It was very eclectic.

Dan: At the beginning they're all dressed as Christopher Sly's wedding guests, then when they decide to play a trick on him, they put on a play for him and use basically what they can find lying around. The design conceit is they just basically get everything out of this guy's wardrobe, all his old stuff he used to wear decades ago. Some of the costumes are 70s, 80s, very eclectic. That's specifically just for this show; the whole play within a play thing.

How did you decide for Petruchio to come out to his wedding to Katherine in the long fringed vest and not much else?

Vince: Well, it's in the description of costume that we wanted something completely disrespectful to everyone in the room. Completely inappropriate. It was all from the designer but you sit and chat. I think it was essentially the Naked Cowboy from Times Square. So that's the influence.

Dan: Nowadays people are used to informal weddings; people where whatever they like. When the play was orignally written, the fact that he didn't turn up in a conventional wedding outfit probably would've been bad enough. In this version, if he'd turned up in jeans and T-shirt, it wouldn't be really that dramatic. Wouldn't be that ridiculous that he turned up planning to get married in this outfit. How far do you have to take it before the audience gets it? That he's behaving completely obscenely, really?

Was Katherine just broken at the end of the play, or did she perhaps have some sort of feelings of love with Petruchio?

Dan: I still weigh a little bit between the two. It kind of varies from night to night. Ed says that perhaps she suffers from an element of Stockholm Syndrome, where you fall in love with your captor. And I imagine that might be something that happens, that would happen to her further down the line. But what happens is so quickly that she's just broken, she's tired. She's hungry. She's given up, she's submitted. The only way that she can survive is just by saying "Yes," to anything he says. It's incredibly sad.

What about Petruchio? Has he learned something at the end of the play within the play?

Vince: No, he doesn't learn anything. I can justify Petruchio's behavior absolutely, 100 percent. The way that I view him is he just wants peace and quiet and that's all. They're going to be married; that's it. It's like, "Now, we're married," and there was a time when you didn't divorce. Nowadays everything's disposable. Then it was we're gonna be married for life and I'm the boss. There are other productions where they deprive Katherine and he eats and fills himself up. Nowhere in the text does it say that. He's not eating either. Nobody's eating. We're all doing that until everyone does what I say because I'm the master.

Dan: But he's a product of his society. It doesn't excuse him but I think that it explains him. But has Christopher Sly learned something?

Vince: Oh, he's terrible. But, Petruchio is a part Sly is playing and that's sort of the fancy of being the alpha male. Having everyone run around doing your beck and call.

Is the play relevant today, or how do you make it relevant to someone who's perhaps never seen Shakespeare before?

Vince: It's SO relevant.

Dan: This play is one of the first, if not the first play Shakespeare wrote and as such, I think it's the oldest play I've ever performed in. But I think it's the most relevant. It has the most divisive effect on the audiences. It stimulates the most debate. It's incredibly relevant. One reviewer said something along the lines of "It's such a shame Propeller couldn't make it relevant to today's audiences" and I thought don't you watch the news? Do you not see what happens all around the world every day? It's incredibly relevant, this story. Propeller, though, if people have never seen Shakespeare before, is probably a really good place to start. I think it makes his plays very, very accessible without patronizing people in the slightest. I think the main thing with both plays is come with an open mind. To Shakespeare, to an all male company and to a British company. Don't think ,"This is the way it's going to be" because they're all guys or they're all British or it's Shakespeare. Come see a play.

Vince: Come to listen to the words.

Propeller raises money for a charity close to a member of the cast each year by singing in the lobby during intermission, or "intervals" as they say. This year, the charity of their choice is Target Ovarian Cancer. Learn more and donate on Propeller's page at: justgiving.com/propeller13.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan