Helena Kaut-Howson has never been the kind of director to be shy about throwing the melting pot into the melting pot: her vision of Shakespeare's most troubling early comedy suggests a Renaissance carnival gatecrashed by the Veronese chapter of Hell's Angels.

Most modern directors do not so much produce The Taming of the Shrew as construct elaborate apologies for it, so Kaut-Howson's gung-ho aesthetic, driven at full pelt in the pursuit of pleasure, is a striking departure. It's also so charmingly acted one is almost prepared to believe that the psychological torture inflicted on the heroine is a perfectly reasonable course of anger-management therapy.

Tanya Ronder's excellent Kate certainly simmers with an excess of fury - one wonders how this violent, blue-haired termagant can possibly meet her match, until Lloyd Hutchinson's magnificent Petruchio roars in on his horrible hot-rod and mows her down. That Kate should resist his persistent entreaties for a kiss is hardly surprising - she may be a shrew but there's no telling what manner of small mammals might be nesting in his beard. Their relationship is played, by and large, for hilarity rather than brutality.

Johanna Bryant's wonderful wardrobe concept aside, the production avoids emphatic interpretation. Having jettisoned at the 11th hour Snoo Wilson's specially commissioned adaptation of the Christopher Sly induction scenes, Kaut-Howson seems to have taken the text out of its inverted commas and played it as if it were packed full of exclamation marks instead.

A first-rate cast proves more than able to sustain the almost impossibly high energy levels required. The perplexing snub to Snoo Wilson can hardly be explained in terms of excessive playing time - this Shrew shoots by with scarcely a pause for breath. High-calibre performances such as John Branwell's bullish Baptista and Joseph Alessi's mercurial Tranio expertly reinforce the commedia dell'arte tint to the Paduan court, while Nick Cavaliere's vicarious Viking look makes him the perfect Petruchian lieutenant. Physical business is expertly accomplished with the aid of Toby Sedgwick's movement direction.

Overall, it's a thoroughly enjoyable evening, were it not for the nagging suspicion that the more problematic aspects of the text have been steamrollered rather than ironed out. Kaut-Howson provides the most trouble-free Shrew of recent times - and that's the trouble.

Until 14 April. Box office: 0161 833 9833.