The Taming of the Shrew (review)

Can we entertain the idea that The Taming of the Shrewcan be performed and received as comedy in the post-Women’s March US? If so, would the laughter be empathetic and solidary rather than callous? The answer lies in physical theater which is uniquely poised to activate elements of farce in the play. Shrewis one of the Shakespearean comedies that tends to clash with modern sensibilities and is therefore generally considered challenging to stage. The Synetic Theater’s version reminds us that, after all, the foundation of this play is farce, a play-within-a-play to mock the worldview of Christopher Sly the drunkard and to entertain the impersonated lords who derive voyeuristic pleasure from watching Sly gawking at Shrew. The so-called play-within-a-play could also be a fanciful dream of the inebriated Sly.

The Synetic Theater’s ninety-minute dance, musical, and visual feast rendered the comedy in vibrant colors—without spoken words. There was no induction or framing scene, though a fair amount of extratextual material had been introduced. Similar to Synetic’s 2009 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dreamwhich opened with the birth of the Indian boy who transformed into the adult Puck, Shrewopened with a funeral scene in a sober tone, with Baptista and his daughters mourning the passing of his wife. With a stroke of deliberate incongruity, the funeral quickly faded into a series of fast-paced scenes of frivolity and slapstick comedy, as whimsical and kittenish Bianca pranced among suitors and took selfies. The contrast between the opening and subsequent scenes painted Bianca in a negative light. Contrary to traditional images of a saintly, virginal Bianca in Shakespeare’s text, Nutsa Tediashvili’s Bianca was not a particularly likeable character.

Crucially, the production did not invite the audience to laugh at Katherine’s expense. Far from it. We laughed with Irina Tsikurishvili’s Katherine and Ryan Sellers’s Petruccio as they tripped each other over and, in the final scene, as they schemed hand-in-hand for the wager money. The Synetic Shrewdid not so much rehash Elizabethan ideologies of gender roles as explore the play’s farcical undertone through the comical self-importance of the male characters around Katherine and through pantomime as a caricature.

As such, Paata Tsikurishvilis’s adaptation offered a sympathetic interpretation of Katherine’s seemingly antisocial behaviors in the context of her fashion designer father Baptista’s flamboyant lifestyle and her self-indulgent sister Bianca’s Kardashianesque narcissism. Petruccio was no longer the lone antagonist. With their outsized personalities and retro 1990s costumes set against larger-than-life video projections by Riki Kim on the four gray columns center stage, Baptista and Bianca became the perfect provocateurs in Katherine’s life. Katherine experienced a sense of entrapment in the socialite society in Paduawood, a thinly-veiled metaphor for contemporary Hollywood. Consequently, Katherine distanced herself from the world of Baptista and Bianca, especially the catwalk scene earlier on where Bianca pranced across the stage in exuberant outfits. Her body language and movements were diametrically opposed to those of Bianca who flirted with a large group of suitors who were after her family’s wealth and fame. Bianca’s suitors were portrayed in broad, comic strokes, including a cross-dressing Lucentio and a puppylike Gremio. While the series of wooing scenes were clearly played for laughs, they also served to underscore Katherine’s contempt, frustration, and possibly jealousy of Bianca’s popularity.

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