The Royal Shakespeare Company’s latest Katherina — the shrew in need of taming — is what we would now call a ‘ladette’. Fag in one hand, bottle of whisky in the other, this Kate (Lisa Dillon) swaggers through Padua a terror to everyone, including her long-suffering old dad Baptista (Terence Wilton) and younger sister Bianca (Elizabeth Cadwallader), a handy victim for her torture sessions. That she happens also to be — to use another modern term — a rich bitch would make her appealing to the impecunious tough-guy Petruchio (David Caves, in a most impressive RSC debut) even without the bonus of her being hugely sexy.

It is very many years — perhaps since the celebrated Liz Taylor/Richard Burton partnership in the 1967 film — that we have seen a Taming of the Shrew in which the protagonists battle on such equal terms, even if Kate is obliged to stand on a chair to meet her strapping husband eye to eye. Both recognise, one senses, that theirs is a staged fight, an act being put on for the amusement of others — which in this production is precisely what it is.

Unusually, director Lucy Bailey preserves the framing device of the Christopher Sly subplot. This means the whole story is presented as a play performed for the entertainment of a drunken tinker who has been gulled into believing he is really a pampered aristocrat. The sobering sot — in a richly comic performance from Nick Holder — moves quickly from wide-eyed wonder to an easy accommodation with his new status in a manner reminiscent of the Dream’s enchanted Bottom. Speaking of which, one sees rather a lot of roly-poly Mr Holder’s naked rump as he ranges around the giant stage-size bed, complete with billowing sheets, pillows and giant wooden headboard, that designer Ruth Sutcliffe has devised as the performance area.

With Sly dipping in and out of the action, the audience is able to laugh at a tale that is notoriously difficult for modern audiences — those at least from countries where sexual equality is respected — to treat with anything other than revulsion. What a joy to see a production that celebrates the play’s status as one of Shakespeare’s broadest comedies rather than one that needs to be handled with the utmost sensitivity and therefore — all too often — dreadfully dull.

The plot concerning Bianca and her trio of suitors keeps the laughter coming, too. David Rintoul’s leering old Gremio is a caddish bounder who might have stepped straight from an Ealing comedy of the 1950s, to which period (at a guess) the action has been updated, while Sam Swainsbury’s Hortensio comes over as an agreeable silly billy.

Lucky Lucentio (Gavin Fowler) is the one who wins the fair maid, however, having passed his identity to his servant Tranio (John Marquez) and assumed the role of the young lady’s tutor. The — er — vigour with which their lessons are conducted is hilariously revealed as the huge panels of the ‘headboard’ at the back of the stage open to find the pair in ever more imaginative and athletic sexual positions.

Until February 18. Box office: 0844 800 1114 (www.rsc.org.uk). The play tours to Milton Keynes Theatre from March 6-10. For tickets call 0844 871 7652 or go to the website (www.atgtickets.com/miltonkeynes).