Who history doesn't teach, it makes numb

This was so very close to perfect that I can hardly bear it.

This weekend, I went to see Taming of the Shrew at the Courtyard Theatre in Stratford. Sometimes, I like to indulge my latent drama critic around vocally upper-middle-class English bourgousie and vacuous American tourists. I like the intellectual reassurance.

As a recovering feminist, this wasn't my choice of play. Theatres are no longer the stuffy and restrictive institutions they once were, but they still object to audible swearing and airborne missiles during Petruchio's key speeches. As a recovering feminist, I'm a bit touchy about the portrayal of Katherine's eventual, inevitable and complete capitulation to her husband's will. When I say 'touchy', I mean 'violently opposed to'. Let's face it, being a recovering feminist, I hate this play.

I loved this.

Propeller are an all-male company, which was the only historically accurate aspect of the performance. All my feminist posturing was solved. All dramatic texts lack something; this one had lacked Propeller. And platform shoes. And a balding Kate, wearing ripped fishnets, for me to fall instantly and irretrievably in love with. It had lacked wheeled wardrobes, and a man in a thong, and the use of the 'play within a play' construct, and a sense of complete animal joy. For a bunch of guys, and for all the joking, they made Kate's awful, impotent and completely powerless situation perfectly clear and desperately sad. I could write my thesis about the nuances of this performance. It was excellent.

I am giving up the theatre forever because nothing will ever, ever, be as good as this. Propeller are in Stratford until Saturday 11th, and then they're touring before transferring to the Old Vic. If you don't go and see them, you're dead to me. Seriously. If you see it and don't enjoy every last beautiful, hilarious, deliberately balanced second - well, you must already be dead inside. And there's nothing that I can do about that!