Theater Online - New York Theater Reviews

William Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" often engenders theater artists to make fascinating choices in interpreting his story involving various aspects of love and marriage. Cole Porter put it to music in "Kiss Me Kate." More recently, the all-female The Queens Company gave it a wonderfully humorous and poignantly "feminine" spin, and Peter Hall's all-male Propeller Theater ensemble assaulted the script with profuse gusto and physicality. Presently, under the direction of John Castro, the Hipgnosis Theatre Company's immensely energetic and only slightly cross-dressed cast is presenting the classic romantic comedy as "a vaudeville-influenced affair" with out of the ordinary sound effects and intriguing staging. Some of the artistic choices on display are more effective than others.

Most productions of "Shrew" progress quickly to its basic plot elements: the fiery courtship of a belligerent and man-hating Katherina and willful and unrelenting Petruchio, his heartlessly determined efforts to break her "liberated" spirit after their prescribed marriage, and the duplicitous wooing of Katherine's younger sister, a seemingly delicate Bianca. However, Castro has chosen to be faithful to Shakespeare's 1623 Folio by playing "to the hilt" an ill-fitting "induction" scene. The play begins with the drunken tinker Christopher Sly becoming an object of amusement for a band of young, rowdy noblemen who bring him to a mansion and present a play called "The Taming of the Shrew." Soon after the play-within-a-play begins, Sly falls asleep, is never heard from again, and--in fact--vanishes by the beginning of Act II.

The theater space at The Flamboyan Theater at CSV consists of two rows of audience seats, behind which are hung ornate pictureless frames (as if at a palace banquet hall), bracketed by a couch at one end and a small stage (with footlights and curtains describing scene locations) at the other. Conceptually, the vast room is given a sense of intimacy and the beginning of the play is served well, but its dramatic effectiveness dissipates along with the drunken tinker.

At the opening night performance I attended, a hard-working cast of twenty displayed a great deal of dedication and vigor; nevertheless, the results often seemed like hullabaloo and confusion with the decibel level of Shakespearean delivery somewhat more elevated than needed or desired. In fact, there were moments where I wondered what was going on, where, and to what purpose. Several wonderful exceptions were created at the heart of the play by the tinderbox chemistry of Kate Dulcich's feisty yet womanly Katherina and Wayne Alon Scott's responsive yet macho Petruchio. Elizabeth Mirarchi as a self-possessed Bianca also contributed an appealing performance.

In addition to enjoying the numerous comic aspects of "The Taming of the Shrew," it's always interesting to observe how a director deals with the plays seemingly misogynistic elements: Kate's "education" dictated by the domineering Petruchio and her final speech of submission:

Such duty as the subject owes the prince,

Even such a woman oweth to her husband.

And when she is forward, peevish, sullen, sour,

And not obedient to his will,

What is she but a foul contending rebel

And graceless traitor to her loving lord“

For me, the interpretation as presented in this "Shrew" is ambiguous, as much of my feelings are about the transpired two and a half hours traffic of the stage.