The Taming of the Shrew
William Shakespeare
Modern Verse Translation by Amy Freed and Play On Shakespeare
African-American Shakespeare Company
Like his Merchant of Venice with its many antisemitic references, William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew – even for all its underlying silliness – is often viewed as a difficult work to swallow by modern audiences, given what is generally seen as its support of blatant chauvinistic and misogynistic treatment of the formerly headstrong, independent Katherine by her groom, Petruchio. But for Co-Directors L. Peter Callender and Giulio Cesare Perrone of African-American Shakespeare Company’s The Taming of the Shrew, the resolution is simple: Set the Bard’s comedy in the psychedelic, flower-power of San Francisco’s Summer of Love of 1967; mix up traditional gender roles; and let laughter and love guide all wooing and warring between would-be lovers through sharp-edged, tongue-in-cheek puns, double entendres, and metaphors. The result is a hilarious, uplifting, and love-affirming Shrew where in the end, triumphant tamer and subdued tamed apply to both the bride and the groom.
But first, here is a brief refresh from your Shakespeare 101 class. Baptista has two daughters: Always-in-a-rant-and-rave Katherine – shunned by all potential bachelors due to her obdurate and unruly ways – and sweet and obedient Bianca (of course desired by single men old and young). Baptista refuses to allow Bianca to accept any proposal for marriage until Katherine is wed. Wooers of Bianca combine their forces to find someone naïve (and brave) enough to marry Katherine.
When Petruchio arrives in town looking for a bride with a large dowry, he is immediately recruited; and the fun and fury of courtship begins that soon looks more like a battleground. In the meantime, the suiters of Bianca – Lucentio and Hortensio – disguise themselves as tutors of the studious Bianca in order to woo in between phrases of Latin and notes of music. When the desired wedding bells soon ring, a happily ever after for Kate and Petruchio is long yet to occur. Petruchio has other plans how to shape his bride into the obedient wife he desires. And all we can say is – especially with the twists to come in this delightfully devilish African-American Shakespeare version as modernized by Play On Shakespeare and Amy Freed – good luck with that.
Bethany Montgomery’s Katherine is indeed a furious combination of a tornado, charging bull, and stubborn ox, all in the body of a stunningly beautiful young woman with a myriad of fabulous braids falling to her waist. As she stamps and screams whenever challenged by anyone – be it a music teacher finding a broken guitar around his neck or an impatient mother who responds with her own shouts and snarls – Katherine is in huge contrast to her syrupy sweet sister, Bianca (Jasmine Williams). Bianca is a “mommy’s girl” who knows how to tear up and bawl like a baby on a moment’s notice in order to get mommy’s undivided attention and cooing comfort. As the mother to both, Layce Lynne Kieu’s Baptista is a force on her own to deal with – a matriarch that commands the stage every time she enters and who can express herself not only in words that are strong enough to move mountains, but also in such a host of facial expressions that elicit both awe and laughter from us, the audience.
The line of would-be grooms of the desirous Bianca includes an elderly neighbor, Gremio (Jamey L. Williams II), who shakily walks grasping the same cane that he uses to punctuate in the air every bombastic statement he bellows as he prances about like an old, ornery rooster in the barnyard. His local rival is Hortensio (Jason Blackwell), who is getting nowhere under the watchful eye of mother Baptista and decides to offer his so-called musical services as a tutor named Litio.
To this list is added Lucentio (Ije Success)– arriving in high-style hippie wear to SF from Chico – who convinces his servant, Tranio, to become himself while he becomes a Latin tutor under the name of Cambio and soon also emerges as the real intended of the much-sought Bianca. Both “Cambio” and “Litio” elicit many laughs as they teach a coquettish Biana random conjugations of Latin or pluckings on a guitar amidst over-done, romantic words of promised love.
But these wanna-be lovers are small-town fry compared to the entrance and presence of Petruchio of Verona Vallejo (more geographic fun in this California adaptation). Each time Joshua-Morris Williams enters as the arriving Petruchio, it is as if we are at a rock concert and Little Richard, Sly Stone, or James Brown himself is parading down the aisle seeking and expecting our adoration. His Petruchio makes moves that send his arms and legs spinning like the blades of a windmill. He scoots across the floor like a kid on a slip-and-slide and all the time is the ultimate in sure-headedness and confidence.
When he first meets Katherine and suddenly finds himself head-locked in her defiant grips, his cool is not lost for a moment as he just uses the Bard’s words to turn her insults into his praises in order to win – at her obvious surprise – a reluctant hand in marriage. When Petruchio begins to turn the wooing tide into his taming campaign, both Joshua-Morris Williams and Bethany Montgomery give award-winning performances as the groom tries to starve the bride into submission by denying her some finger-likin’-good, KFC chicken while she submits to his tortures just enough to fool him and everyone else that she is now a submissive wife (not).
As in many Shakespeare works, it is among the minor characters that some of the biggest stars emerge, especially when it comes to those producing laughter. Time and again, Sylvia Abrams-Wolffsohn comes close to stealing the show as Lucentio’s servant-turned master, Tranio. There is nothing subtle about this Tranio’s presence. Every pronouncement is accompanied by dramatic moves of hands and pointing fingers, by eyes that swell to quarter size, and by sporting a general air of hilarity masked as seriousness.
Likewise, Petruchio’s servant, Grumio (W. Fran Astorga) is a clownish loudmouth who struts and stomps about with full and unabashed gusto, whose interaction with a kid’s slinky toy is a show in itself, and who has a rib-tickling tug-of-war with Katherine as she tries to grab some popcorn while Grumio is watching “I Love Lucy.”
Finally, and no less uproarious, is Ashley Raggs who doubles as a stand-in father for Lucentio – one who absolutely is not going to give up the role when the real father appears – and as a rich, gruff-voiced, and just-a-little-sleazy Widow who becomes the bride of a Bianca-less Hortensio.
The production’s ingenuous and inspired co-directors have wisely chosen to allow all this hubbub of hilarity in their Shrew to occur on a mostly blank stage (much as did Shakespeare) with a few ‘60s style trunks, bird cages, and what-not – like might have been found in shops on Haight and Ashbury in 1967 – to be scattered around beneath giant psychedelic projections of SF scenes (Giulio Cesare Perrone, scenic design). The music of the late ‘60s drifts in and out of scenes and their transitions via the sound design of Raymond Archie (along with foreboding thunder each time the name of “Katherine” is said in the opening scenes). Kevin Myrick creates the right ambiance of both love-seeking and love-wars through an 60s-appropriate lighting design (including fun switches between sun and moon in one of the Katherine-Petruchio battles of wits and words).
A Creative Team standing ovation goes to Alia Davis for a trip down memory’s lane through a host of wonderfully outlandish, gawdy, color-popping, flower-and-bead embedded costumes that could together be an award-worthy show at the next DeYoung exhibit about the Summer of Love in San Francisco. Especially noteworthy are the star-power (Elvis-worthy) duds that Petruchio gets to wear – even the white, pajamas and fluffy house slipper surprise he wears to shock and totally incense his bride at their wedding.
There is fine line between slapstick humor that becomes just too silly that it is no longer that funny and comedy that is over-the-top and shines with elements of slapstick. Under the watchful yet obviously gleeful eyes of this Shrew’s co-directors, the former situation was almost entirely – but not completely – avoided with there being a few instances when individual actors just went a bit too far to get a laugh.
So in the end, who wins in this Amy Freed/William Shakespeare combo of The Taming of the Shrew? In the summer of ’67, love does, of course. African-American Shakespeare Company has once again proven that its boundary-pushing, excellence-embedded productions are definitely powerful delights that deserve to fill the Marines Memorial Auditorium to the hilt.
Rating: 4.5 E
A Theatre Eddys Best Bet Production
The Taming of the Shrew continues through May 26, 2024, in a two-hour (with intermission) production by African-American Shakespeare Company at the Marines Memorial Auditorium, 609 Sutter Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA. Tickets are available online at https://www.african-americanshakes.org or at https://www.cityboxoffice.com/ .
Photo Credit: Joseph Giammarco
