The Taming of the Shrew (review)

Daniela Varon's Shrew embraced the spirit and energy of Renaissance playmaking. The setting was during carnival time in Padua. Music, color, and commedia abounded. Edward Check's scenic design was rich in the colors of the Renaissance—tan, black, and gold draped the upstage windows which turned medium blue as night descended. Lighted chandeliers hung in the hall to the right and left of the center fireplace. With deft transitional changes, the windows opened to reveal a daylight street scene. Period costumes were ornate and bright in colors of reds, blues, and oranges. Making merry at this carnival were half-masked musicians, dancers, singers, and jugglers. The main actors strolled onto the stage, bowed to their audience, and donned costumes from a trunk.

Shrew was mainly played as a farcical comedy with recognizable commedia elements. The zanni figure was Tranio, the clever servant; the foolish young lover, Lucentio; the pantalone, old Gremio; the pedant, Hortensio, disguised as a music teacher. The latter entered disguised with a big rubber nose and black rimmed glasses. Comic bits were interspersed throughout the play—from the pratfalls of the old, bumbling Gremio, who walked with a cane and kept falling, making others catch him, to the miming of Tranio with his "moonwalk," to the clowning of Grumio when he became Kate's horse and attempted to gallop. There were multiple slapstick bits, as when Kate stole Bianca's jump rope and tried to slap her with it, or when, in the haberdasher scene, Petruchio chased the tailor around a table while whipping the floor.

In spite of all the clowning, which the audience enthusiastically enjoyed, there was an undertone of reality in this production. Petruchio's taming was severe, as he attempted to bend the rebellious Katherine to his will. If Shrew turns out to be a love story between idiosyncratic characters, the text does not give us any hints of affection between the two until the end, when they demonstrate an amused appreciation and understanding of each other. In this production, Kate's recognition that a wife must obey her husband was portrayed in Maderoy's serious, yet fiery delivery of the final speech. The only hint of a more playful relationship between the two came after the wager when Kate winked at Bianca while Petruchio tossed Kate the bag of money.

Then the production did an about-face. The frame of the play opened out to another frame as not Sly but Queen Elizabeth stood up in the balcony. To those at the wedding she proclaimed "I will have here one mistress and no master" and required all to bow to Kate. Why did Queen Elizabeth appear in this last scene? These words, her own justification for her unmarried state and thus for maintaining absolute power and control, have a parallel, yet different, meaning for Kate. Can Kate keep her individuality by submitting to marriage as long as she and Petruchio know that how they act in public (as society expects them to act) is different from the way they act in private? These questions probably could have been raised without Queen Elizabeth's being brought in so suddenly as to surprise and perplex the audience. Varon seemed to want us to imagine that, as Sly had lived within his illusion, so too might we, the audience, accept the illusion that Queen Elizabeth could very well have been in the original audience of the Shrew. Perhaps if the character of Elizabeth had been seen from the beginning, sitting in the balcony...