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The Taming of the Shrew                  Shakespeare Santa Cruz, 2004


Robert Hurwitt - San Francisco Chronicle


Petruchio: spouse-abusing brute or misunderstood shrew-tamer?  Is Shakespeare’s ever-popular The Taming of the Shrew an outdated piece of misogyny or—seen in its proper context—a marital bargain between misfits?  And what kind of marriage did Kate and Petruchio make?  Something like that of, say, the vituperative perpetual warfare of George and Martha in Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?


Such questions—and many more—achieve vital immediacy this summer at Shakespeare Santa Cruz.  Artistic Director Paul Whitworth is back at the helm after a two-year sabbatical, during which the company mounted atypically desultory seasons, and he's put together one of the group's strongest seasons ever.


Welcome back, Whitworth.


It’s not just that all three shows are beautifully mounted and invigoratingly directed and performed—though it certainly helps that Whitworth is back onstage and has brought back three of the most creative directors from past seasons, including former artistic directors Danny Scheie and Michael Donald Edwards.  Above all, it’s the inspired combination of plays Whitworth has selected, pairing Shakespeare’s Shrew with John Fletcher’s nearly contemporary response to it, The Tamer Tamed, and marrying them to Albee’s modern take on embattled matrimony.


Whitworth isn’t the first to pair Shrew with Tamer. … The Royal Shakespeare Company made international theater headlines with tandem productions, also well-received in NewYork. Whitworth, an RSC veteran, improves upon the idea by eschewing the changes the RSC made to Tamer—and by adding Woolf to the mix.  The plays resonate off each other to complex and provocative effect.


Fletcher responded to Shrew by having a widowed Petruchio (the solid, smoldering, soulfully macho Robertson Dean in both plays) decisively tamed by a clever second wife, Maria (a playfully sexy but resolute Blaire Chandler, who also plays a frumpy, resentful Kate awakened into radiant sexuality in Shrew).  He also, in passing, tells us how bad a match resulted from the first play (Petruchio still has Kate nightmares), referring to nonstop wrangling that sounds rather like Albee's George and Martha.  In this context, it looks as if Albee may have had the same idea.  His couple argues about the moon in a manner strikingly reminiscent of Shrew.


Thematic connections are reinforced by setting the Renaissance plays in post-World War II America—about a decade before Woolf—on Kate Edmunds’ two-tiered set in the festival's redwood-shaded amphitheater.  B.Modem's sly, tongue-in-cheek ‘50s costumes establish the period, with the same cast in equivalent roles in both plays.  Gregg Coffin's buoyant, jazzy score for Shrew gives way to Scheie’s camp-fest of ‘50s pop tunes in Tamer (including songs from—what else?—Kiss Me Kate).


With costumes, actors and characters establishing clear links, directors Tim Ocel and Scheie take different but complementary approaches.  Ocel’s slightly abridged Shrew (he cuts the awkward scenes about the drunk for whom the play is staged) is relatively straightforward.  Sharply paced and played with impeccable comic timing, it draws most of its humor from the script, making use of its modern-dress format for occasional inventive flourishes and fleeting pop references.


Ocel’s primary focus is on re-imagining the Kate-Petruchio relationship—and the result is intriguing.  Rather than a fiercely independent or haughty Kate, Chandler depicts a self-hating spinster, stewing in jealousy over her scheming sister Bianca’s popularity with men (including their father).  Dean's Petruchio is the opportunistic soldier of fortune as war-fatigued veteran (in uniform), seeking to make the best of a mercenary match and falling for Kate—and she, much to her surprise, for him—in the process.


Ocel makes the taming less monstrous by having Petruchio suffer as much as Kate, with Dean's Robert Mitchum-sad eyes reflecting the strain.  The result, in Chandler's knowing recital of Kate's big submission speech, and Dean's overwhelmed reaction, is unusually satisfying and touching.  And Dean’s Petruchio carries over nicely into Scheie’s Tamer with a shell-shocked, hollow bravado ripe to be tamed by Chandler's savvy, quick Maria.


Most of the key supporting roles provide clever continuity as well.  Morgan Davis’ man-manipulating Bianca from Shrew nicely segues into Fletcher's militant feminist Bianca, Maria's main ally (while Sarayu Rao is a sweet dissembler as Maria’s sister, in Fletcher's version of the Shrew subplot).  Patrick Kerr’s sardonically querulous old lechers, Mike Ryan’s comically conflicted Tranios, Cody Nickell’s love-struck swains and Tommy Gomez’s comically resentful servants add evocative through lines. …

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Robertson Dean

The Taming of the Shrew

Shakespeare

Shakespeare Santa Cruz

2004

Photo: r.r. jones