Abstract
In Christopher V. Edwards's ’70s disco-era production, it turns out that Christopher Sly's dawning belief that he ‘is a lady [sic] indeed’ (Ind. 2. 71) who ‘smell[s] sweet savours’ and ‘feel[s] soft things’ (69) (mostly in plaid, orange vinyl, and suede) can reasonably be attributed to an old-fashioned acid trip, or dose of ‘Molly’, as the play's heavily Boston-accented local acting troupe calls it. As Sly (Michael Broadhurst) settles in to watch the start of the cast's Saturday Night Fever-like dance moves from the sidelines, he digs into a box of popcorn while the remaining all-female actors don red clown noses to signal to the audience that they will be watching antiquated, over-the-top commedia dell’arte unfold as a kind of burlesque. Notably, however, actors playing the female roles (Sly/Kate, Bianca, the widow) do not wear red noses, suggesting their roles are not to be read as part of the ‘fiction’.
Announcing they are in Padua (apparently a lesser outpost of Don Corleone's mafia), Lucentio (Paige Clark) and Tranio (Joni Weisfeld) wear loud plaid pants, windbreakers, big tinted eyeglasses, and jackets with suede elbow patches (costume design by Chelsea Kerl), delivering their lines with maximum silliness and exaggerated gestures. Breaking character, they interrupt their scene to conscript Sly into the role of Katharine, who frets his new red dress might not match his skin tone (never mind the beard). Returning to heavy Bostonian inflections, the cast discuss restarting the scene at Baptista's house and Sly/Katharine preps for his role, reading his lines from a dog-eared copy of the play (it is his idea to swap Lucentio's and Tranio's identities for ‘Cambio’ and ‘Lucentio’) to the cast's encouragements, ‘You’ll be great, girl!’ Kate warms up to her role as the titular shrew by ripping the heads and limbs off Bianca's stuffed animal ‘suitors’.
The set is a split-level Brady Bunch-era dark brown wood-panelled rec room furnished with orange vinyl swivel barstools, convenient for actors’ lounging over a drink between scenes (scenic design by Ben Lieberson, props and scenic art by Saskia Martinez). Not content with the cast's omnipresent red clown noses and gestural comedy to underscore the audience's comprehension of the problematic ‘fiction’ they are watching, Tranio as Lucentio (Joni Weisfeld) adopts an oversized jacket along with such an absurd hyper-exaggerated caricature of Joe Pesci that, while skilful, devolves into tics and the Brooklyn-Italianisms become distractions (Michael Toomey is credited as ‘clowning consultant’). Later on, the Pedant (a drifter hippie in a fringe suede vest), pretending to be ‘Vincentio’, performs an amusing parody of Tranio's comedy. A coquettish flirt (no red nose for her) in a mini dress and go-go boots, Bianca pouts appreciatively for Cambio's Latin lesson in 3.1, ‘Wow’, and lures him behind the bar, a Petrarchan match made in heaven.
Mixing up the stereotypes, the older Gremio (Jade Guerra) belongs to the black Southern gentry, with close-cropped hair, a yellow ochre turtleneck, and a classic plaid suit, a visual match to Baptista's three-piece suit with wide lapels. In pointed contrast to Gremio's staid portrait, a jiving, ultra-hip Petruchio (Patrice Jean-Baptiste) sports a Jamaican accent, a billowy Afro, a big collared floral shirt, and powder-blue, high-waisted bellbottom jeans. Gremio and Tranio's competition for Bianca's hand in 2.1 is first a verbal sparring about sexual maturity versus youthful virility that turns into a boxing match (Tranio billed as ‘the Pipsqueak of Padua’), with Bianca (Julia Hertzberg) announcing the rounds by carrying a placard. This ends with her auctioning off to the highest bidder: she takes Tranio/Lucentio's ‘offer’ and holds up the victor's arm, disappointing Gremio.
Occasionally breaking character to signal awareness of her own problematic role as the shrew tamer, Jean-Baptiste takes off her red nose ‘costume’ and drops some of the jive routine, blurring the line at times between Petruchio's serious and ironised ‘taming’ moments. The 2.1 wooing scene ends with Petruchio chasing Kate up the stairs and corralling her against a metal balcony railing (later in 3.3, Petruchio does the same to their wedding party guests as they cringe in response to his ‘chattel’ speech); Kate's unusual silence at the end of this scene is explained here also by Petruchio's coercive headlock, though Broadhurst's sizeable stature fails to make clear why Kate should be physically intimidated by the slighter Jean-Baptiste, especially since Edwards preserves much of Kate's undaunted verbal defiance throughout the play.
Drumming her fingers angrily as everyone awaits Petruchio's entrance for the wedding in 3.3, Kate rips off her nun's habit veil and later hurls her bridal bouquet at a guest. Petruchio arrives for their next skirmish dressed like a Vietnam veteran, in army fatigues, a bandana headband, and black under-eye glare paint. Gremio plays bartender while Kate drinks shot after shot, challenging Petruchio. In response, he pretends to rescue Kate from the wedding party, raising a fist in solidarity to ‘resist’ the baffled guests.
Lugging the pair's suitcases on the trip back to Petruchio's country house and then manacled by a very long chain that trails offstage, a shell-shocked Kate gradually shrinks into submission. It is hard to see exactly what beyond the ostensible dictates of the script compels this submission, especially when the audience is given glimpses of Petruchio's ‘real’ (Jean-Baptiste's) character's ironised, only performed misogyny (his taming is largely rendered as exaggerated slapstick) and actor Broadhurst's occasional eye-rolling makes it clear Petruchio's taming efforts will not go unchallenged. In later scenes, Kate/Sly's alternating defiance and submission, neither attributable to fear nor an Elizabeth Taylor-styled/Zeffirelli-film fantasy of growing spousal love, becomes troublingly more inexplicable. This may be the precise effect that the production intends, of course, with our current crop of players increasingly baulking at the lines in their scripts. The production remains opaque as to why this Kate should submit in this day and age, complicated further by the comparatively liberated 1970s-era setting: while it is entirely reasonable to read ambivalence into the play's message about gender roles, Edwards's production creates more mixed signals. Our present-day troupe of actors, it seems, are trying to mount a production of Shrew set in the ’70s, but the script will just not conform to their sensibilities about how they could stage the play for audiences in 2023, even as burlesque.
As a gesture to early modern staging practices, the casting of Broadhurst as Kate aligns with the play's potential commentary on the manufacturing of gendered roles, and Petruchio's performative machismo suggests he dislikes the taming school too. By the time Petruchio addresses the audience for his 4.1 soliloquy, his demand for our advice about his taming methods is belated, given that Kate has already largely submitted to his will, though she still bursts out that her ‘tongue will tell the anger of [her] heart’ lest her ‘heart will break’ (4.3.77–8). Likewise, in the 4.5 ‘sun/moon’ scene, Kate matter-of-factly, yet defiantly, tells Petruchio that he can call the sun a ‘fucking disco ball’ (gesturing to the ceiling, where, helpfully, there is indeed a mirrored revolving ball). Their sparring is no playful game, but it is clear Kate's acquiescence is limited. Somewhat bafflingly, just before Bianca's wedding party, Kate removes Petruchio's red clown nose to kiss him in a display of genuine affection (revealing the cast's ‘true’ respect for their fellow actors?), yet she curtsies to Petruchio woodenly and flings off her cap with artificial coyness. However, Bianca and the Widow seem to escape similar demonstrations of gender conformity (modern ‘real women’ too like Kate/Sly for not wearing the red clown noses?) – their defiant return to the assembled party confirms their husbands’ losing bets on their obedience as Baptista (Lisa Tucker) drunkenly applauds his son-in-law ‘Pistachio's’ and then ‘Pinocchio's’ win.
Broadhurst delivers Kate's famous 5.1 speech on obedience with heavy Bostonian inflections, without irony but also with evident reluctance, checking the lines of his Shrew script. Listening intently, the all-female cast begins visibly to recoil from Kate's lines as we hear the sound of a skipping record growingly increasingly audible (sound design by Elizabeth Cahill). ‘We did it!’ the members of the cast cheer unconvincingly. Bianca stomps off stage in frustration as another cast member pleads with her, ‘Julia …’ Interestingly, beyond Edwards’s heavy ironising of the play's potential misogyny through his emphasising of its already extensive, destabilising meta-theatricality, he adds to it: the new layers of ‘playacting’ performed by the explicitly local, all-female acting troupe (except for Sly/Kate) allow the cast to quite literally ‘talk back’ to the play they would defy – yet the production finally decides to take Shrew's message at face value as a very real taming.
In the play's final moments, the now-demoralised ‘real’ cast takes off their red noses (the play ironised no longer) and proclaim themselves ‘sickened’ by Shakespeare's script as they all angrily depart the stage: ‘Is that how it should be done?’ someone asks confusedly. Left alone sitting at the bar, Petruchio gives us a long look, mutters ‘Fuck’, and pulls off his red clown nose, the tamer tamed.