Wooden-O’s production of The Taming of the Shrew, directed by Aimée Bruneau, wins my vote for best play of the 2009 Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival. They could move it indoors, slap a few lights on it and charge admission; the show would still be a success.

The show opens with Lucentio and his servant Tranio, dressed like backpackers fitted head to toe from the latest REI catalog, complete with the obligatory Lonely Planet guide, arriving to explore Padua - a dilapidated trailer park somewhere deep in the redneck South.

Many years ago I saw a production of The Visit at Theatre in the Round that used a similar set device. The Visit makes constant reference to the great contribution a character made to the town, and in that staging a small outhouse was built in one corner of the space which everyone would glance at when remembering the ‘great contribution’. When Mama Baptista offers ‘half her lands’ as dowry for Katherina, we laugh at the paucity of the offer. But when we see that Petruchio lives in a shabby campground, we’re reminded that wealth is relative. To a guy living in a tent, half a trailer, or an outhouse, looks like a pretty good thing.

Petruchio’s tent is used to give the audience a nice little Shakespearean in joke as well. A Winter’s Tale contains one of the most obscure, seemingly random stage directions ever - one that is has been omitted from every production I’ve seen of that play so far. In lieu of describing in detail how Petruchio means to deny Katherina sleep, he simply invites Kate into the ‘bridal chamber’. Then his servant arrives wearing a big bear mask and chases her out of the tent and off the stage. I for one was greatly amused that I finally got to see someone

Exit, pursued by a bear.

You know when Katherina (played with ample wit and vigor by Kelly Kitchens) comes on stage wearing a Hooters shirt and guzzling Pabst Blue Ribbon, you’re in for something different. The play is still in performance, so I don’t want to give away all the gags. However, John Ulman’s Hortensio deserves a mention. In addition to his humorous turn as a redneck, Hortensio’s disguise as a music teacher for Bianca is turned into a passable Elvis impersonation. That and some attention given to developing the relationship between Hortensio and the widow he eventually marries turned a part that is often a throw-away into a memorable interpretation.

Two of my more socially conservative friends came along for the show and their only question afterwards was, “Is Shakespeare always so lewd?” Tough question to answer. Shakespeare was no prude, and there are some fairly bawdy lines in that play (“What, with my tongue in your tail?” etc.). On the other hand, sometimes there is a temptation to play a sort of “Where’s Waldo?” game of “Spot the Double-Entendre”, or perhaps better named “Where’s Willy?”. Then, once the phallic reference is found, whether it was in the text or not, the actor must execute a rude gesture to make sure the audience spots it, too. I used to think that this was just a symptom of the American theatre’s Shakespearean inferiority complex, but in Ian McKellen’s recent King Lear, on the line ‘Every inch a king!’, we were treated with a crotch grab that was particularly crude since a few scenes before we’d actually seen those particular inches.

During the scene where Petruchio’s servant taunts the famished Katherina with meat, with or without mustard, Grumio steps in, plants on foot up on a some prop, and thrusts his pelvis forward as if insinuating that there is some sort of invitation to perform fellatio going on. My objection is not to the rough humor; rather it’s the violence that does to the intention of the scene. Grumio ought to have enough fear of his master not to treat his new mistress like a common whore. Such treatment has no part in Petruchio’s taming scheme, and can only result in increased shrewishness. Indeed, this blocking is, of course, just a set up for Kate to violate Deuteronomy 25:11-12. Now I find getting punched, kneed, or grabbed in the groin precisely as funny as the next man does, but if I thought that was the height of comedy, I’d stay home and watch reruns of Jackass.

The ‘Shakespeare in the Park’ performances are often abridged a bit more than you’d normally see in a stage production - in the case of the Seattle Outdoor Theater Festival, none of the plays went longer than 2 hours. But even so, I did feel that Act IV was edited with a rather heavy hand. I think Act IV is really the heart of the show, where we see Petruchio’s taming program in action. Theatre-goers in Elizabethan England would have already seen many examples of how to handle a froward wife: you beat her. Contrary to the misogynistic reputation this play is sometimes saddled with, Shakespeare shows a more humane way. I would have liked to see more of that Act remain intact.

But besides Act IV, I never got the sense that the redneck gag was replacing the inherent humor of Shakespeare’s play. Turns out iambic pentameter works just fine with a southern drawl, and even if Shakespeare never wrote the words “Beer me!”, I think he would have approved. So the comedic whole was more than the sum of its parts. Combine that with an ensemble cast who all pulled their own weight and a willingness to play the more sentimental lines free from irony, and this was a show worth the watching.

(Photos by Erik Stuhaug and Jacklyn Walsh.)

Jul 17, 2009 | permalink