There’s little subtlety to be found in The Taming of the Shrew, Mask and Bauble’s last production of the semester, which opens in Poulton Hall on Thursday night.Director Tyler-Marie Walker’s (SFS ’12) take on Shakespeare’s convoluted farce pulls no punches from curtain to curtain, squeezing every ounce of comedy out of the text.
The cast sells every joke with unrestrained abandon, pausing to accentuate every last innuendo and double-entendre—and since this is Shakespeare, they’re everywhere. Intentional overacting abounds, earning laughs through both straight comedy and ironically intense drama. This amped up style makes the stilted Elizabethan dialogue punchy and easier to follow, but sacrifices a bit of the sly cleverness that’s central to Shakespearean productions. Sometimes, the production just comes on a bit too strong.
Still, the tendency to keep tongue just barely in cheek makes for some truly hysterical moments—when an impostor’s disguise is ruined by the arrival of the man he was imitating, or when the characters verbally spar with one another, the cast sails. A few performances are particularly memorable: Dan Hrebenak’s (SFS ’12) Hortensio is boorish and gaudy, swapping an ostentatious gold jacket for thick, scholarly glasses in a disguised attempt to woo Bianca, and John Tosetti’s (COL ’10) Tranio makes an entertaining mockery of a pretentious merchant.
Although the dialogue is straight from the text, Walker sets the show in the 1950s, giving the characters cigars and snappy Mad Men suits, and putting them inside a neat, orderly living room. It’s a funny and fitting choice for a play in which women are viewed as objects to be won, conquered, and tamed, and the Bard’s 17th-century witticisms feel right at home within the oppressive confines of a postwar household.
Photo by Lexie Herman
For all of its twisted hilarity, the play hinges on Katherine, a fiery, rebellious woman who must be married before her younger sister, the beautiful Bianca, can be courted. Maria Edmundson (COL ’12) gives Katherine an intriguing range of emotions—at times she’s volcanically angry, but shows genuine hurt when she thinks her husband has stood her up on her wedding day. Initially unwilling to become the loving housewife she’s expected to be, Katherine’s constant, acerbic eruptions and violent outbursts intimidate the cast and audience alike. Her ultimate transformation, however, leaves everyone dumbfounded. The end of the play finds the fiery Katherine morphed into a loving, subservient lady. Her ending monologue leaves the audience to sort out what Shakespeare meant by turning this terrifying, fiercely independent woman into an obedient, model housewife.
This metamorphosis is believable due to Shawn Summers’s (SFS ’12) convincing Petruchio, the only character brave enough to attempt to tame Katherine. In the end, we can rationalize Katherine’s stunning change only by realizing that she truly loves Petruchio, and is willing to sacrifice her rebellious independence to satisfy him. The alternately angry and caring dynamic between the two gives the play its legs and makes the story compelling.
If The Taming of the Shrew feels familiar, it’s because its plot is the blueprint for every romantic comedy… ever. What sets it apart is the fascinating evolution of Katherine, whose complexities are far greater than those of contemporary rom-com heroines. Mask and Bauble’s interpretation of the Bard’s classic play is rambunctious, over the top, sometimes messy, but ultimately a good time.
