The redevelopment of our theatres in Stratford, finding a new home in London, and establishing a firmer financial footing are all at the top of my list. But none of that is worth doing unless we can first clearly articulate our purpose and demonstrate what can be unique about the RSC. Vital clues are there to be found in a creative dialogue with our past, but the answers lie in an unpredictable future. Theatre is not a secure profession, and any theatre that is solely focused on securing its future is a dead theatre. The RSC’s opportunity is to create the conditions where a brilliant future can take root and inspire another, different generation of theatre makers.. Considering the amount of indignation The Taming of the Shrew evokes, it’s not surprising that someone answered Shakespeare in his own medium.

But John Fletcher did so only 20 years after the play was written, and while its author was still alive. In The Tamer Tamed, Fletcher was more likely motivated by commercial than feminist considerations – even today, The Shrew is the second-most-popular Shakespeare play with audiences of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Seeing both plays, with near-identical casts, is not only fascinating for those interested in social and theatrical history but also a treat for anyone – wonderful ensemble acting joined with the intelligent, lucid directorial vision of Gregory Doran.Doran’s production of The Shrew is a lesson that freshness doesn’t demand novelty, much less eccentricity. This is, in appearance, a traditional production, of the type we’ve all suffered through – Elizabethan dress, Fifties artistic style, dark-brown set of free-standing doors.

But instead of the stuffy ho-ho-ho’s that usually go with this territory, we get the hilariously insecure swaggering of Jasper Britton, an adorable Petruchio. Full of Dutch courage when he declares he’ll take on “Kate the cursed,” he declares ringingly, “Have not I in my time heard lions roar?” in a way that makes you sure it was at the zoo. For Alexandra Gilbreath’s Kate, a whip might indeed come in handy: this wild virago has a voice with echoes of Felicity Kendal’s rough purring, but she biffs her blameless little sister and even, when she wants some straight answers, ties her to a door. This Petruchio and Kate seem to tame each other, as they realise they need some new survival tactics. The servants are incisively characterised as well, notably Rory Kinnear as the cheerful Tranio, hugely enjoying himself, and Nicholas Tennant as Grumio the groom, his face a sort of tribal mask proclaiming, “see how I suffer”.When the two brawlers are wed, however, and the comedy darkens, I’m afraid not all Doran’s artistry can take away the nasty taste of the taming. In his time Shakespeare must have seemed quite liberal for advocating psychological warfare instead of the blows then used to train children and dogs and women. But to us starvation and sleep deprivation are the tactics of torturers, and Petruchio’s insistence that Kate literally call day night if he says it is sites him on the border between narcissist and psychopath.

The reconciliation scene is beautifully done, but Kate’s counsel of submission makes sense only if a husband will say “just kidding”.In Fletcher’s riposte, Kate has died, and Petruchio, remarried, prepares for his wedding night. But the older and craftier Maria (Gilbreath again) bars the door and, backed by her sister (the charming Naomi Frederick), says she won’t let him play till he dances to her tune. Fletcher is a lot talkier than Shakespeare, his plot more repetitious and his language coarser – the lavatorial humour caused the play’s disappearance when gentility triumphed over vivacity. But his comedy is still highly entertaining, especially as enlivened, by Doran, with fantastic exaggeration and pungent realism.There is also a splendid sequence in which, the petticoat rebellion having spread to the town, the local women indulge in an ecstatic orgy of leaping, pot-banging, and lustily singing “The women shall wear the breeches”.