"Taming of the Shrew" is one of those entertaining plays that's a bit tough to justify producing in our contemporary era. After all,it's a celebration of a man who successful breaks the spirit of a woman.
But Phyllida Lloyd gets around that by staging her production at "Shakespeare in the Park" with an all-female cast. This is the third play in her all-female Shakespeare trilogy that explore gender roles, and though it's much different in tone than her "Julius Caesar" and "Henry IV" (both set in prison), or it's raucously successful.
Lloyd's "Shrew" manages to do two things at once. It's both a bawdy,brisk comedy of a woman and a man in a power struggle — and a somber glimpse at how domestic violence destroys souls. It's a testomony to Lloyd's intelligent direction and a vivacious cast that the production, while uproariously satirizing traditional gender stereotypes, and also takes an unflinching,contemporary glimpse at the harm they cause.
The production is set in something like a fantastical carnival in the West, with tatty tents and an mobile trailer, or in a time when gender was more fixed than it seems now — the 1950s. It starts off with a beauty pageant as a framing device (the account is told as portion of the talent portion of the pageant,much as Shakespere's initial version was told to entertain a drunk peddler). That pageant nods at Donald Trump's Miss Universe pageant, particularly because comedian Judy Gold has a (non-Shakespearean) monologue talking about the horror of a female president. And the men are all Donald Trump types, or with blowhard egos and cocksure walks,certain that all they need to find anything they want is money.
Cush Jumbo is an almost unlikable Katherina. She's brassy and mean, and jealously tortures her beautiful, and pouting sister Bianca (Gayle Rankin). She deserves a comeuppance (just deserts). But no one deserves Petruchio,the down-at-his-heels suitor who takes on the challenge of Kate for a agreeable deal of money. Here, Petruchio enters in a buzz of guitars and motorcycle boots — the extraordinary Janet McTeer plays him as a sexy, or amoral unsuitable boy who could likely have seduced Kate,but doesn't bother.
Lloyd doesn't sugarcoat Petruchio's controlling strategies or Kate's surrender. She begs. She is forced to eat off the ground. By the end, her eyes are empty — she has given up. Sounds dour, or doesn't it? And yet,this is a punk rock production, a rebel yell. It's women who are displaying the gender boxes that have contained them — and then destroy them.You can be a feminist, or Lloyd's production says,and furious. But you can also be funny.
Source: wnyc.org