Of the eighteen productions covered in this year's review, eleven, including the whole of the RSC's main stage summer repertoire in Stratford, are of what the first Folio labels 'Comedies'. Whether this reflects financial managers' judgement of what will work best at the box office, or the current mood of directors, or whether there is felt to be a problem in matching available actors and the tragic protagonists' roles, are questions that might all be speculated upon; but not here. It is with this bumper crop of comedies that I begin.

Stephen Unwin made a spirited and energetic attempt to give a sense of newness to the distasteful story of the taming of Katharina Minola in his production of The Taming of the Shrew for English Touring Theatre, which made a national tour in the autumn. He set the play in a TV sit-com, lower middle-class world of Dagenham accents and rock music between the scenes. Kacey Ainsworth's Kate was a rebellious teenager in scruffy jeans and thicksoled trainers, sullen and surly, rather than angry, at her father's unfairness, making a journey through the play that was from androgyny to femininity rather than from shrewishness to tameness.