'The Taming of the Shrew' at the Lantern (second review)

Let’s talk, instead, about the production of The Taming of the Shrew currently at the Lantern Theater, which is good fun if you ignore the above. Director Charles McMahon seems to think he has resolved the issues by framing the play with the original prologue, not usually included, with a drunken lout for whose benefit the play within a play is performed.

In this production, a drunk in modern clothing stumbles across the stage, interrupting the usual plea for silent cell phones and next year’s subscriptions. The first night, the ushers, unaware that this was part of the play, almost called the cops. The ushers have since been forewarned, and the show goes on without problems. This device, updated with modern references, bookends the play we know, but doesn’t really tie it together, except to hint at the disguises we wear and how gullible we are.

The disguises we all wear

The drunk, played by J Hernandez, turns into Petruchio in one of the show’s many character changes. This, after all, is a play about the disguises that we wear to achieve our not always honorable goals — in this case, love and money, and hopefully both in the same package.

The beautiful Bianca (K.O. DelMarcelle) is being pursued by two elderly suitors, but before her father Baptista (Nathan Foley) will agree to her betrothal, he must first marry off his elder daughter Katherine (Joanna Liao), that “earthsome, brawling scold.” Along comes Petruchio, who “wants to wive it wealthily in Padua,” and who agrees to woo and marry Katherine in return for a large dowry. His scheme is to tame Katherine into submission, while Hortensio (Matt Tallman) and the also newly arrived and instantly smitten Lucentio (Ahren Potratz) disguise themselves as tutors to spend time with the fair Bianca. Ultimately, this being a comedy, everyone strips off their disguises and finds true love and fortune, even if it’s hard to swallow Katherine’s submission to Petruchio as her lord and master.

The conceit of the show is that the relationship between Petruchio and Katherine is like the tango — the man leads, but the woman must hold her own. At one point Hernandez and Liao actually begin to dance, which worked so well that I almost wished that it had continued through even more of their dialogue. But perhaps that would have been too much of a good thing.

Hernandez, as the swaggering, tango-dancing, shrew-tamer Petruchio, is well matched with the feisty Liao, a Katherine who never really succumbs to his dominance, although she does seem to grow to enjoy their repartee. Some of their battles are choreographed (by DelMarcelle), and they work wonderfully.

Fidgets and sighs

Bianca sighs and plays with her braid a lot, but DelMarcelle never lets us believe that she is as full of sweetness and light as she is depicted. She also plays Biondello, who seems to be everyone’s servant at once, which leads to some quick change moments, although DelMarcelle says she always keeps her dress on beneath her trousers.

My favorite version of the play is Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate, and I kept waiting for the actors to break into song, which Petruchio did once — “Where Is the Life That Late I Led?” — in a brief homage to the musical.

The other thing to do with any play by Shakespeare is to play spot the phrase — those sayings that we think we know (such as “Who woo'd in haste and means to wed at leisure” or “If I be waspish, best beware my sting”) but that we probably misremember.

This production doesn’t break any feminist ground, but it also never diminishes Katherine into submission — and despite the current interest in BDSM relationships, this doesn’t qualify for that either. It is instead a fun show with lots of energy that occasionally breaks the fourth wall to engage the audience and keeps us interested with little surprises along the way.

For Pamela Forsythe's review, click here.