William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew is a story about an older daughter who does not want to adhere to society’s standards and in fact is abhorred by all the men in the village. She makes people hate her with her mean qualities. Her younger sister is clearly the favorite and has multiple suitors but their father will not give her up until the older is wed. The men make a deal with a stranger who loves money to court this Shrew and what ends up happening is that both are changed and end up being more in love than any of the other couples.
The production seen in Glendale at an old Messianic Temple portrayed all of this and more in a gorgeous way. It coincided with the 445 birthday of Shakespeare himself and was a nice present to him; he would’ve been proud.
The production was set in the fifties Neapolitan setting and it portrayed a lot of the feministic qualities that were around in this era and later. The main character, Kate, played by Allegria Fulton put a lot of femininity into her portrayal and really brought the anger out enough to make the audience not like her in the beginning and love her by the end of the play. During the talk back that followed the production, the audience learned more about these feministic qualities that Fulton drew on for the anger. Those include being forced to wed in an arrange marriage, not being the favorite, etc which gave her plenty of cause to be angry.
The overall production of the play had a very fast feel moving through the plot with very little explanation. It wasn’t needed though because the audience could understand what was going on. They knew being Shakespeare that a lot would have to be left out lest they watch a four and a half hour production.
Of course being Shakespeare, not everyone would be able to understand it, which I think is one of the main reasons why a third of the audience left at intermission, but being Shakespeare, there is so much going on within the play that one almost needs to stay to the end in order to truly appreciate the play. A lot that wasn’t clear in the beginning of the play was flushed out toward the end.
One thing that is very typical of Shakespeare is the switching of characters for a cause. We see this often times in Shakespeare’s work and he even wrote an entire play on this whole notion in “Comedy Of Errors”. In the switching of Lecentio and Tranio, the portrayal by the actors was very realistic because while I knew that they had switched places, the actors resembled each other so closely that it was rather difficult to tell them apart, which I would have to give credit to the casting director on this on. He did excellent job of casting these two characters so closely.
Another typical Shakespearean style is the role of Gremio played by Tom Fitzpatrick. This is a classic Shakespeare stock character of the village idiot and in some ways Fitzpatrick was so comical and believable that he stole the show away from the other actors. A lot of the time when he was on stage, I found myself looking at him to see what sort of funny thing he was going to do to add to the production.
The entire play was jam packed with social farce. Laughter filled the room with characters riding on and off stage on bikes and the lead male Petruchio adding so much to the scene. Petruchio played by Steve Weingartner added a lot of laughter and provided a complementary appeal to Fulton’s character. Throughout the play, he used various ways of “Taming” Kate by showing her what she looked like. The temper that he threw when she argued with him about the moon was, I think, the turning point for her being more cooperative and the end proved to be a true display of their love that grew out of a hate relationship.
Overall, Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew was very intriguing to watch. Of course it is not for everyone because it takes an audience that is educated in Shakespeare to get the full feel of the play. However it still works for someone that isn’t as versed but it takes more to get into the play. Shakespeare being the master playwright incorporated a lot from other plays into this play and the production of his play should his true work.