Taming of the Shrew @ Great Lakes Theater 10/1/11
Great Lakes’ The Taming of the Shrew tosses out the original Italian setting in favor of sunny California in the 1980s. The result is, like, really funny and, like, totally tubular. Best ever? For now, director Tracy Young’s version just might be.
Her energetic revisioning of Shakespeare’s classic battle between the sexes brightens the stage and the eye with stunning (and fit) players and a So-Cal set packed with allusions to all things 1980s pop and wonderful. The Los Angeles setting makes sense — after all, in Shakespeare’s day, Italy — a warm, beautiful place with high beauty standards and a habit of fine living — was the equivalent of heavenly California to Londoners forced to live near the oft-cold, foggy Thames River.
The outstanding cast bounces around, but in a good way, in the oh-so cool exercising-to-be-perfect Hollywood way. We know at the start we’re in for a farce and physical comedy. The play opens with a blithe Jane Fonda-lookalike (figure-perfect Andrea Leach, clad in a leotard, her poufy hair held back by a sweat-band) flouncing onstage, ignoring everything except her workout schedule. At first Jim Lichtscheidl’s Petruchio seemed a little too much of a visiting yokel [he’s from Montana instead of Shakespeare’s Mantua], a slacker just in town to hustle a quick buck by marrying a rich man’s difficult daughter. But he soon proves he’s up to the task of taming the shrewish Kate (played by Sara M. Bruner). Kate, dressed as if she’s going on safari, has clearly decided to be as unlike her sexy cheerleader sister, Bianca (Kjerstine Rose Anderson) as possible. Where Bianca would say a flirtatious “Yes,” Katherine says “Hell, no!” Bruner and Anderson throw themselves into their roles as dueling sibs to good comic effect.
Since part of the fun is identifying the 1980s icons that Young, scenic designer Michael Locher, and costume designer Alex Jaeger have quoted, I’ll not identify all of them here — but keep an eye out for Indiana Jones, Prince, and Tom Cruise in Risky Business. If it’s possible to “cover” the Bard then I’d say Great Lakes has done it, turning a 16th-century play into a self-consciously “hip” (if not “awesome”) production. And anyone who truly believes that Katherine’s the only one who has been “tamed” just doesn’t understand much about the battle of the sexes.
Taming of the Shrew continues at the Hanna Theatre in Playhouse Square through Sat 10/29.
PHOTO: Actors Sara M. Bruner (planking, top right) as Katherine, Jim Lichtscheidl (bottom right) as Petruchio and John Woodson (left) as Katherine’s father Baptista (Photo by Roger Mastroianni).
Laura Kennelly is a freelance arts journalist, a member of the Music Critics Association of North America, and an associate editor of BACH, a scholarly journal devoted to J. S. Bach and his circle.
Listening to and learning more about music has been a life-long passion. She knows there’s no better place to do that than the Cleveland area.