In the late 1980s, thanks to a Drama Book Shop employee whose brother-in-law was a dancer for the Joffrey Ballet, I saw a performance of the John Cranko ballet The Taming of the Shrew, which was one of the funniest things I had ever seen. Since then, I never heard of any revival of the ballet until two months ago, when I found on Amazon.co.uk a recent DVD release of the ballet from the Stuttgart Ballet, for whom Cranko originally staged it with dancers Richard Cragun and Marcia Haydee as Petruchiop and Katherine. Cranko, a British choreographer who worked in musical theatre, had choreographed Britten's ballet The Prince of the Pagodas for the Royal Ballet, was director of the Stuttgart Ballet at the time of his early death, and the new production was part of a Stuttgart festival.
So, was the ballet as funny as I remembered? It was. I do not know why major ballet companies are not performing this ballet regularly. The score was less dissonant than I remembered; the composer does to Scarlatti what Stravinsky did to Pergolesi in Pulcinella, only Stravinsky did it better. To its benefit, it has a great deal of humor, and at times it reminded me of Respighi's Ancient Airs and Dances.
