The Taming of the Shrew @ The Classics Theatre Project
—Sam Lisman
Many Shakespeare scholars believe the outside-the-main-plot “induction” scenes that open The Taming of the Shrew are critical to understanding the play. Personally, I’m ambivalent: I enjoy the Christopher Sly scenes and assume Shakespeare had a purpose in mind—but admit I don’t know what that purpose was.
Many theater companies skip them altogether, and so does Joey Folsom, the director of The Classic Theatre Project’s current production of Taming. Instead, Folsom begins his 1980s-ish Southern California-themed Taming with an aerobics class—presumably on the beach—to capture the vibes of the place and time. It’s a mostly dumb scene (in the sense of mute, not stupid), except for the men calling the name “Bianca” as they work out.
The story is familiar to most theatregoers (and considered infamous by some). Baptista (Anthony Magee) has two daughters. The younger is the lovely, reputedly sweet-tempered Bianca (Devon Rose); the elder is Katherina (Madyson Greenwood), who is difficult, prickly, and standoffish—the very definition of the title’s word for an ill-tempered woman. Despite Bianca having many suitors, Baptista (wishing to be free from Katherina) has wisely decided that the younger daughter cannot marry before her older sister, much to the dismay of both sisters and suitors. In the meanwhile, he asks the suitors to provide tutors for his daughters.
Luckily for everyone, Petruchio (Andrew Manning) has come to town, hoping “to wive it wealthily” in Padua (might make for a good song, yes?), caring nothing about the woman so long as she is rich. And because this is a Shakespeare comedy, Bianca’s suitors don disguises and plot intrigues to win her favor. Gremio (James Hansen Prince), a much older neighbor, employees a musician to plead his case, not realizing he’s actually one of the rival suitors, Hortensio (D’Kameron Edmonson). And newcomer Lucentio (Brady White) has his servant Trania (Dahlia Parks) pretend to be him, while he becomes Bianca’s tutor, a specialist in classical literature (particularly love poems).
Presumably to avoid confusion, Folsom has changed the name of Petruchio’s comic servant (Shane Cearnal) from Grumio (too much like Gremio) to Rumayo. The Widow is played by Jordyn Pierson, who also doubles as a servant, while David Britto and Gideon Swift play suitors and servants (joined by other members of the cast).
The performances are being held outside on the grass between the Addison Theatre Center and the Stone Cottage, using the cement pathway as the stage. Folsom’s minimalist set consists of Christmas lights draped along and between poles flanking the path. As is often the case with outdoor performances, the sound on opening night was awful. The actors had microphones, but the amplification was horribly inconsistent: one sentence came through the speaker, the next was heard naturally. The sound was so bad, in fact, that they made the correct choice to ditch the mics completely at intermission. As a result, the actors had to perform the second half unplugged, which was so much better (for the audience; I fear it will leave the cast with sore throats). I only wish the decision had been made sooner.
The costumes, by Braden Socia, are a parody of ‘80s entertainment: the men are Don Johnson/Sonny Crockett from Miami Vice wannabes with their jacket sleeves rolled up, except for Lucentio, who wears a Marty McFly outdoorsy vest. Bianca dresses like Madonna (and offers a surprisingly bitchy attitude throughout—flipping people off, looks that could kill). And Petruchio and Rumayo being “dressed like madmen” at the wedding is interpreted to mean wearing dresses, which doesn’t really track.
I wasn’t all that pleased with the textual choices that were made. Cutting Lucentio’s father means losing some of the funniest scenes in the play, and leaving us bewildered by Baptista’s sudden willingness to forgo his anger at Bianca marrying without his approval. Moreover, in what I can only guess is an attempt to make Taming more palatable to those who can only see through today’s eyes (as if the play weren’t 425 years old), Folsom first flips the “kissing in public” scene: now it is she who desires a kiss, and he who finds it unseemly (going completely against Petruchio’s character). He then divides Kate’s closing speech between the two main characters, rewriting the sections he gives to Petruchio (so it is he who is ashamed that “men are so simple”), and placing him under Kate’s shoe. To accomplish these revisions, Kate starts calling him “Pet.” This may make some people feel better, but it leaves the play nonsensical.
In Shakespeare’s version, Katherina is forced to submit to the brutality of her husband, who has starved her, deprived her of sleep, and demanded she say things that she knows aren’t true. All the while Petruchio insists on his love for her and his desire that she never know anything but perfection. In this version, Petruchio still does all this, yet for no discernable reason has a change of heart, a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree pivot. Why? We don’t know. And Katherina now loves Petruchio so much that she ends the play by saying, “now kiss me, Pet!” None of this makes sense. She is supposed to be instructing Bianca and the Widow; is Petruchio instead speaking to their husbands? How does that jive with the bet he just proposed and won?
I have nothing against taking something old and making it new, but to do so it has to be internally consistent—it has to have legs. Despite some noble efforts on the part of the cast and crew, this production doesn’t really stand up.
WHEN: Through April 23
WHERE: Addison Theatre Center, 15650 Addison Road
