Powered by the twin engines of Samantha Spiro's feral Katherine and Simon Paisley Day's certifiable Petruchio, Toby Frow's new production of 'The Taming of the Shrew' is spectacularly rambunctious stuff, even by the Globe's hearty standards.
Balding, bonkers and brilliant, Paisley Day's scrawny middle aged Petruchio has something of Don Quixote to him, travelling Italy on an endless, ill-defined quest in the company of hangdog manservant Grumio. Day gets a big laugh when he comments upon the 'wind as scatters young men through the world'; but you get the impression he probably was a young man when he started his ludicrous perambulations.
By contrast, Spiro's deeply frustrated Katherine has lived her life in a cage. When we first meet her she is literally roaring, her tiny face and fists contorted in rage as she snarls and stomps at anybody who gets within range of her short leash. But it's not hard to see how she has ended up this way. Father Baptista (Pip Donaghy) may be alarmed by Katherine's temper, but he treats her with utter high handedness: her face crumples like a lost little girl's when he casually marries her off to the first suitor that comes along, the evidently barking Petruchio.
If Petruchio's subsequent 'humbling' of his bride is ultimately palatable here, it's because he seems like an equal opportunities oddball, who freaks out the smarmy suitors to Katherine's spoiled younger sister Bianca and makes his servants sing silly songs and dress up as horses. He lives a life outside of stifling straight society and doesn't 'break' Katherine as much as persuade her to join him in his games.
It's great to watch old hands Day and Spiro at it: their chemistry is comic rather than romantic, but they have it in abundance, and for sheer energy their cartoonish assaults on one another would knacker far younger lovers. And they are far from the only stars in Frow's brilliantly detailed, laugh out loud production. There's nary a weak link to this madcap 'Shrew', but special mention must go to Pearce Quigley's deadpan provocateur of a Grumio, who slopes around exacerbating any given situation with po-faced puckishness.