Because of sadomasochism-style woman-breaking themes, “The Taming of the Shrew” has been
controversial since its inception.
It’s also why the play has seen a lot of light around Albuquerque in the past few years.
Adapted and directed by John Hardy, “The Taming of the Shrew” captivates today’s audiences with the slapstick and racy jokes of yesteryear, finding space to perform at Fourth Street’s Filling Station.
The short of “Taming” cut down like this: Two strangers enter Padua, Italy, one looking for love and knowledge, the other riches. They encounter a tired noble with two daughters — the elder, named Kate, is an angry, violent “shrew” while the younger daughter, Bianca, is beautiful, virginal and sought after.
The romantic stranger enters the fray after falling for the younger daughter and making a deal with the other newcomer, Petruchio, to seduce and marry the shrew first so that the younger daughter can be officially courted.
Petruchio, of course, does this through a series of hilarious depravities and good, old-fashioned deception.
For any Shakespeareophile, the most fascinating part of the production by far is the manner in which the script has been cut. “Taming of the Shrew” is one of Shakespeare’s longest and most consistently edited plays with the back-story around the actual taming hardly ever performed.
Here six actors play 13 roles with aggressive cuts made, characters combined and monologues swapped. The cleverness of Hardy’s textual manipulation will make for excited conversation for anyone familiar with the play.
Considering the grand pedestal on which all-round English laureate Shakespeare finds himself, it’s easy to imagine people made uncomfortable by the liberties Hardy takes in reconstituting characters.
And while it might be even easier to make the case to do this for something like “King Lear” or “Hamlet,” “Taming of the Shrew” has never been Shakespeare’s tightest work.
The character of Hortensio is supposedly Petruchio’s best friend, but it’s hard to tell how or why. He is an unimportant character, though he has continual personal soliloquies rife with purpose, almost as if Shakespeare intended him to be a larger character, but ended up trashing the whole idea.
In the end, most scenes boil down to drudging exposition and discussion and maybe a blithe phallus joke (with the actors pulling on their junk with gusto).
Yet there was something more arresting about the entire cast and the way the play was performed. With little exception (Isaac Guerin Christie and Mike Ostroski doing absolutely fabulous jobs), it was nearly impossible to tell who these people were. Characters felt vague and undefined with only interspersed shouting and penis-waggling being the gauge from one line to the next.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
But who were these people? How would you describe them? Why were they doing the things they were doing? It was a play of people doing — characters repeating lines but lacking in any identifiable purpose or defining features.
Kate was the most confusing character and example of this style.
The shrew is a beastly spitfire, cursing, threatening and lashing out at all around her, but Elizabeth Dwyer Sandlin had none of that. It was difficult to watch the other characters cower in terror, overcompensating for her nonplussed words and bored delivery.
Adjectives and flavor seemed distant and foreign and why any of the other characters would care to listen or pay her heed were lost, save the stiff moments of staged violence.
Frank Taylor Green’s Petruchio is fast, physical and masterful. Even still, the only feature you could ascribe to his person might be “maniac.”
The whole production seems to come from the mind of a man bored with Shakespeare.
Hardy has had an illustrious and lengthy career, acting and directing many of Shakespeare’s works over the past 30 years. His “Director’s Note” in the program is one of the most curious to be printed, meandering in circles about the mysteries and metaphors of the doors and keys you use to enter “Shakespeare’s House.”
Yet Hardy’s house is an experiment rife with risk, and rightly so. Never to discount exploration of something as well traveled as Shakespeare, the venture is well worth it and will hopefully challenge others to have the courage and conviction to realize that fortune favors the bold.
