Staging Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew — like his The Merchant of Venice — presents a tricky problem for today’s audiences. Merchant centers on the venal Jew, Shylock, and is frequently considered anti-Semitic. Shrew centers on the subjugation of a woman, transformed by a husband’s cruel treatment from sharp-tongued and spirited to docile and obedient. The play even climaxes with that woman, Katherine, philosophizing that the only way to true happiness is through submission to a husband.

So what’s a director to do? Honor the text and play it straight, or play it for laughs — as in “nudge, nudge, wink, wink, we don’t really believe all this. And Shakespeare probably didn’t either.”

Ron Daniels, on the Old Globe’s Festival Stage, has gingerly walked a tightrope and accomplished both. He’s faithful to the text, presenting it almost in its entirety, crisply spoken and excellently acted. Yet it’s obviously presented as a show within a show, full of comedy and definitely not to be taken seriously.

Emily Swallow, Jonno Roberts

Photo courtesy of the Old Globe

Shakespeare, possibly wanting to make that point, wrote introductory scenes making Shrew part of a tinker’s drunken dreams. But, because the Bard wrote no finish to that frame, those scenes are rarely done. Instead, Daniels has used visuals to underscore the unreality. Some audience members sit on both sides of Ralph Funicello’s platformed and adaptable Festival set, and looming over the middle of that set, in Vegas-type red neon letters, is the show’s title — with an askew W. In short, Daniels is illustrating, don’t get upset by the play’s misogynist message — we’re just here to have fun.

And fun it is. Primo performances by Emily Swallow as Katherine and Jonno Roberts as Petruchio, Kate’s tormentor-lover, anchor a top-to-bottom fine cast. Swallow relies heavily on her expressive face to convey a range of emotions from anger through exasperation to devotion. Roberts makes good use of his charismatic smile and fluidity of movement to make Petruchio a charmer, almost forgivable even when he’s heartlessly depriving his wife of food and sleep.

Petruchio’s such a meanie because, after wedding the harridan Kate for her dowry, he wants a happy marriage with a peaceful wife. He took on that challenge because Kate’s father had rebuffed the many suitors of her beauteous younger sister, Bianca, saying that she couldn’t wed until Kate had a husband.

The subplots involving the various swains, with much conniving and disguising, provide ample opportunities for comic behavior, and Daniels uses their physical and verbal jousting to advantage. Notable among the players were Jay Whittaker, Donald Carrier, Bruce Turk and Joseph Marcell. (Turk plays Grumio, a servant, and Marcell is Gremio, a rich merchant. Shakespeare may have been an immortal writer, but he wasn’t terribly diverse in naming his characters. These two are particularly strange, unless he was ironically saying that just a letter’s difference might determine one’s lot in life.)

Daniels spreads the action and cast into the audience, and seasons the proceedings with Christopher R. Walker’s original music, supplementing some choral singing and much dancing. Walker also did the distinct sound design, with vocal and dialect coaching by Claudia Hill-Sparks. The lively movement sequences are by Tony Caligagan, with fight direction by Steve Rankin.

Alan Burrett’s lighting is superbly varied, particularly effective in evoking a thunderstorm. Still, the tech honors go to Deirdre Clancy for her costumes, instantly defining a character’s station, from the luxurious garments and bejeweled shoes of the wealthy to the drab garb of the servants. Particularly clever is the gown given to Kate, then removed, piece by piece, by Petruchio.

Clancy also presumably designed the wonderful horses, worn over the “rider’s” clothing with shoulder harnesses, in several scenes. Most dazzling is Petruchio’s, shaped from wood (or plastic) pieces and controlled like the animals in Lion King. It’s so realistic it even defecates.

Cast

Credits