Reject Theatre Project's 'SHREW' adapted by Christine Freije

Then I saw the Reject Theatre Project's SHREW, director Christine Freije's playful yet harrowing "feminist reaction," and I realized I had blithely accepted bullshit because I've accepted Shakespeare's reputation for exalted timeless wisdom, and want to believe that we've finally grown past his misogynistic era.

No more happy ending

Freije’s all-female cast reveals the ugly truth of Shakespeare's Shrew. She starts with the famous final scene, in which Katarina (Emily Fernandez) professes her submission to Petruchhio (Leslie Nevon Holden). The men laugh boisterously and bet on their wives' obedience by sending for them. The wives who refuse to come when called are derided for being, like Katarina, shrewish; when Katarina obeys, she's praised for her remarkable transformation from shrew to dutiful wife. Fernandez, however, plays her as a traumatized victim, which indeed she is.

"The last scene," George Bernard Shaw wrote in 1897, "is altogether disgusting to modern sensibility. No man with any decency of feeling can sit it out in the company of a woman without being extremely ashamed of the lord-of-creation moral implied in the wager and the speech put into the woman's own mouth." I am embarrassed that I allowed myself to ever think otherwise. No more happy ending.

Before revealing how Katarina becomes that way, Freije shifts to a hilarious post-show discussion, in which the cast reveals their unconscious acceptance of the play's premise in their everyday lives. "You will find that guy you don't want at first," Holden explains about a boyfriend who used to stalk her, "but you eventually will like." She also describes playing a man as feeling that she "had a lot of power, and wasn't accountable for anything." Kelsey Hodgkiss, who plays Katrina's meek sister Bianca, protests that "it's just a romantic comedy" and that "feminism is so anti-men, so angry."

We laugh at these modern women trying to rationalize Shakespeare's play and their own messed-up relationships with men, but important ideas are established: we're all complicit in allowing Shrew to be diluted and distorted into an innocuous comedy.

Frejie returns to Shakespeare when Petrucchio, who promises to marry Katarina before meeting her (thus earning a hefty dowry), bullies her into submission. This scene, often played as comical combat, blatantly shows Petrucchio physically subduing Katarina after she tries to fight back and escape. He even re-names her Kate, despite her objections. Every production finds a way to fudge the fact that when Katarina’s father Baptista (Zoe Richards) returns to finalize the deal, Petrucchio has rendered her unable to speak, but the fact is, she's been overpowered.

Their wedding scene shows Petrucchio again bullying Katarina into silence and carrying her off, and it's usually played for laughs because modern productions, working backwards from that ideal ending, take all the lines about Katarina's shrewishness literally, which makes Petrucchio's efforts to "tame" her seem almost charitable. His cruelty and her entrapment reveal what's really happening.

Systematic torture

When Petrucchio takes his bride home, he applies what today we consider torture: he denies her food and sleep.

The former becomes a dinner party, to which some audience members are invited to sit at table. Petrucchio forbids anyone sharing food with Katarina. The audience interaction makes us laugh, but his brutality is clear. Her attempts at sleep become a lovely yet disturbing ballet to Perry Como’s romantic single "Catch a Falling Star," in which Petrucchio's servants constantly snatch Katarina’s blanket and pillows away. The result is a frazzled, disoriented, beaten-down Katarina who, when asked if it's the sun or the moon in the sky, will say anything her captor wants to hear to avoid further punishment.

Petrucchio's line "This is the way to kill a wife with kindness" usually stresses the final word and earns a laugh; here, "kill" is emphasized, and we fear for Katarina’s life.

We've done the same thing with The Merchant of Venice, turning Shakespeare's Jewish villain Shylock into the play's persecuted hero, when it's actually another romantic comedy that celebrates, not condemns, a powerless person's victimization. We want Shakespeare to be better by our standards, but the scripts are what they are.

A positive production reveals the disturbing truth

This all unfolds with much good humor. The audience follows from one area to another in the Asian Arts Initiative's big third floor space (which hosted Pig Iron's Pay Up and Applied Mechanics' We Are Bandits with similar sprawling success). Modern songs and Freije’s energetic staging sharpen the point: we accept Shakespeare's play as a benign comedy because we choose to overlook its awfulness. In another pointed parody of modern theater, the company within the play fires their Katarina, and drafts audience members to audition, with hilarious results. Alternative viewpoints, Freije reminds us, are often silenced.

Reject Theatre Project, which is dedicated to producing one "dream project" from each of its seven members before disbanding, is a savvy organization of ambitious young theater professionals. For example, we're warned of audience interaction before the show, and allowed to opt out by wearing an innocuous sticker: actors will not accost those so marked. For all who fear and loathe forced participation, this is a simple yet extraordinary accommodation.

With inventive clip-light lighting, live music performed by a talented cast (also including great performances by Minou Pourshariati, Julia Ray, and Hanna Van Sciver) and astute acting of Shakespeare and the cleverly devised modern scenes, SHREW is an exciting 90 minutes that I hope Reject will stage again. As long as The Taming of the Shrew is still performed, SHREW deserves to be seen.