kallahan

For anyone who wondered where the amazing Meryl Streep came from, this remarkable documentry will set you straight. This uneven production of "Taming of the Shrew" which was staged in Central Park, New York by The NY Shakespeare Festival, seems secondary to the materful performances at its heart. Watching the young Meryl Streep in 6" high heels to go face to face with the robust Raul Julia is an amazing site and a set of lovers this play usually lacks. The physical side of the two actors work in amazing, violent, hot, exciting and slightly unsettling all at the same time. This Kate has finally met her match and watching the sparks fly verbally and physically between Streep and Julia is one of the finest performances we as Americans have been privileged to see. What a wonderful record. What an amazing pair of actors.

What a terrible shame that this film of Peter Shaffer's amazing play was turned into an uneventful melodrama. The amazing dynamics of the five character's interaction on-stage, has been reduced in the film to a domestic, "kitchen sink" drama. Perhaps the close of the Second World War was too close at hand for the film maker and the studio to really trust the power of the play and the horrors of the Nazi Germany. The English family is American in the film, which takes most of the punch from the drama, and the erotic undercurrents of the mother /son relationship pitched against the German tutor, Walter have been set aside. With the raw emotional core of the drama removed, what sadly remains is a stereotypical, Hollywood drama with little true emotion and a film that sadly serves the startling brilliance of the play.