Pick a Shrew, Any Shrew

NOTHING IS EVER as it happens in Shakespeare, especially not in The Taming of the Shrew. Fumbling tutors are revealed to be bumbling lovers, sly lovers to be slyer servants and witty servants to be wise old men. Baptista Minola, a patriarch from Padua, thinks his problems are solved when he tells the suitors of his submissive daughter Bianca that she cannot be married before they find a husband for her "shrewish" sister Kate. But problems are never entirely eliminated in comedies. They are only, humorously, compounded. When Kate, the shrew, finishes the play as a lady and Bianca, the lady, is unmasked as the true shrew, the switch testifies to the natural comic order of things. And in doing so, it rescues this early Shakespeare from pure farce.

Like a play within a play, any production of this work turns on the final understanding between Petruchio and his tamed shrew. She may finish by agreeing with her husband that a woman's duty is to be a "most patient, sweet, and virtuous wife." Call this a medieval Kate. Or, having been frozen, starved and exhausted by her dauntless husband, she may cry out like a trapped and beaten Kate. In recent years she has been played as an ironic Kate, addressing her last speech, on the submission of wives, directly to the audience as a private joke. Or she may soften, ending up as a loved and loving Kate who has deftly fashioned a new self-image. She may be any of these things--and, in the best productions, is probably all-but she must be a Kate who reveals her capacity for change as well as she conceals it.

ALTHOUGH PUNCTUATED with terrific bangs of comic energy, the current Winthrop House production of The Taming of the Shrew trips and falls over the unmasking of its Kate. By accenting the fast-biting moments of Elizabethan wit, director Leah Rosovsky has left the meaning of the play unclear. The actors, dressed in a hodge-podge of costumes and too often blocked like isolated commentators on the action, come up each with their own interpretations. Jennifer Marre's shrew submits to her husband with an attempt at audience-directed irony. But Jonathan Epstein's Petruchio tries to woo her sincerely with love. Meanwhile the rest of the cast treats their courtship as a thoroughly entertaining battle of wills--a relationship would not be believed even if it could be explained. The audience is left to guess why, in the final festive scene, Kate is the only wife to come obediently at her husband's bidding.

Much of the confusion is Marre's fault. Her Kate is as easily distracted, inconsistent and uncontrollably violent as a child. Although she begins with a convincing psychological blend of jealousy (towards her sister) and craving (for Baptista's love), Marre fails to weld any emotional links. After her meeting with Petruchio, the first man who has ever silenced her--he answers her rails with songs and her frowns with eloquence--she is completely unimpressed. And when, after their hasty wedding, Petruchio determines to go home to the country, either with or without her, Marre vacillates too thoughtlessly between yielding and asserting her rights.

Indirectly, Kate depends for her motivation on the cruelties of Baptista, Bianca and Bianca's suitors. But the Winthrop House actors play these parts with such exaggerated gestures that their deeper intents are not even revealed, much less frightening. Antonio Dajer's Baptista is a put upon father who never manages to rule Marre's Kate. Lois Rosenberg treats Bianca's duplicity as a child's game. And Kerry Konrad and Stephen Toope play the suitors, Lucentio and Hortensio, with surface flair but little depth. When one ends up with Bianca and the other with a willful widow, the marriages strike one not as unfortunate mistakes but merely as their just deserts.

Yet the production, like a comic character, somersaults after its stumble and, standing again, brushes itself off, relatively unharmed. One reason for this is the broad comic talents of three of the actors. John Bacquie intelligently plays Gremio, Bianca's overaged suitor. Richard Price (as Lucentio's impersonating servant Tranio) effortlessly outwits better men. And John Cooper turns in a commanding performance as Grumio, Petruchio's spluttering servant. His attempt to unpeel layers and layers of clothing while telling the story of Petruchio's and Kate's trek through the snow, practically steals the production.

The other reason for this recovery lies in Epstein's Petruchio. The sheer power of his voice manages to contain all of the potentially explosive elements in the play. Epstein, who appears to know how every line of his part has ever been read, is as challenging, excited, scheming, pig-headed, ironic, reflective and ultimately loving as he demands his Kate to be.

Still, even Epstein seems to struggle a bit with the burden; his presence seems too large for the Winthrop House stage. By matching every speech with a particular movement, Epstein's Petruchio is a hint too self-assured and a touch too calculated. He seems to know how this comedy will end from the start.

But Epstein's gargantuan struggles were not foist upon him entirely by the confusions in this production. Modern struggles have set into motion the languages and interpretations of Shakespeare's original play. The Taming of the Shrew unmasks the war between the sexes. And the battle in the Winthrop House production is as overheated, occasionally humorous and still unresolved as our own.