Summary 
Traditionally set battle of the sexes is a delightful romp, wonderfully costumed, with a memorably take-charge Petruchio and a beautiful and complex Kate, fierce and intelligent but saddened and wounded by neglect. A sexually charged first meeting is both love at first sight and a superbly choreographed physical brawl. Exceptional entertainment with the color and energy of a carnival.
Design
Directed by Barbara Gaines. Set by Michael Philippi. Costumes by Nan Zabriskie. Lights by Kenneth Posner. Sound by Michael Bodeen.
Cast
Peter Siragusa (Christopher Sly/Grumio), Timothy Gregory (Lucentio), Ross Lehman (Tranio), Greg Vinkler (Baptista), Fredric Stone (Gremio), Larry Yando (Hortensio), Kristine Thatcher (Katherine), Nancy Voigts (Bianca), Scott Wentworth (Petruchio).
Analysis
Shakespeare Repertory advertises their Christmas-season opening of The Taming of the Shrew with clever "This Holiday's Main Event" posters and postcards, playing up the verbal and physical battle between Kate and Petruchio. Barbara Gaines showcases the intellectual battle of will and wits with adroit splashes of color and comedy plus the theatrical energy of a carnival. Set in 1594 Padua, not incidentally the year the play was first produced onstage, the production begins with a married peasant couple dressed in colorful rags bickering and yelling with each other as they take the stage in a prologue. The couple is swarmed by dancing singers in lavish red, brown, purple, and yellow Elizabethan costumes who transform into patrons at a high-brow English pub. The pub is assailed by the drunken Christopher Sly, a rotund and disheveled hedonist who bellows and blusters, and the actors of the play-within-a-play - including both Kate and Petruchio - emerge from the kitchen in standard sixteenth-century attire to calm the unruly Sly. While the cast clears the stage and exits, Petruchio can be heard rehearsing his lines (with characteristic fervor) from just behind a partition, and he is joined by Gremio, portrayed by the same actor who had just played Sly, but now clean-shaven, lacking red-faced make-up, and without his wig.
Kristine Thatcher plays a picture-perfect Kate: blazing, smart and beautiful, mature enough to combine strong intelligence with a fiery spirit and young enough to be very attractive with flashing eyes and long, auburn hair. She first appears in the balcony above Bianca's suitors, wearing an odd but complimentary green and orange-striped gown, roaring in anger, her hands clenched and claw-like. Scott Wentworth, from the Stratford Festival of Canada, plays her match in the story (if not quite onstage), presenting strong bravura confidence with a splash of world-weary disillusion. Wearing a black leather tunic over leggings and boots, Wentworth's Petruchio struts and poses, hands often on hips, barking out his dialogue with a natural machismo. He creates a great physical chemistry with Thatcher, the duo well-matched in eloquence and appearance, both seasoned and attractive performers appearing to be in their thirties, she playing an embittered elder sister with no prospects and he a penniless drifter with a dour soul but both with similar intellect, humor, wit, and spirit.
Kate and Petruchio seem to fall in love at first sight, and their well-choreographed, erotically-charged battle lives up to the advertising. Gaines' direction is fluid and quick, the performers endearingly emotional: a furious Kate tries to shove aside the solid Petruchio but fails, so she grapples him with a headlock and shoves him to the floor. Pointedly, when Petruchio kneels in supplication before her, she shoves him back down, then joins him for a moment, sitting side by side onstage. But of course tempers flare again and his attempt at escape is thwarted when Kate grabs him by the ankle and wrestles him down, then rises to triumphantly place a foot on his belly. She then mounts him, sitting provocatively - yet still combatively - upon his chest, before Petruchio squirms free. When Kate finally sprawls face down onstage in the vexed frustration of a teenager's tantrum, Petruchio - again, pointedly - reaches for her plaintively, then lies down on his stomach alongside her to continue their conversation (and sexually-charged flirtation). The push-and-pull emotional tug of war charms, richly deserving its centerpiece showcase position within the production. Petruchio's concluding "come on, and kiss me Kate" comment comes as a sigh of relief and is followed by a tender embrace, but then he must literally force Kate's hands into Baptista's (although her resistance appears to be less an unwillingness to submit to Petruchio than a denial of intimacy with her harsh-tongued father).
The stage, lit in the warm tones of a 1590s Italian courtyard, features just an ornamental bench, a suspended swing, and a curtain painted with a pastoral landscape. The gorgeous costumes - on loan from the National Theatre of Great Britain - are a standout, beautiful jeweled and embroidered gowns and tunics of velvet and brocade. Scenic design and costuming nicely complement Thatcher and Wentworth, as do a handful of strong supporting performances. Larry Yando draws the largest laughs - even more than the hyper-exaggerated snorts and mockery from Tranio, Gremio in his gray and pink ballooning knickers, or the high-speed antics of the wild-haired messenger Biondello - when he adopts a nasal twang once his prosthetic putty nose bends woefully to the side after a punch from Kate. Gaines imbues the production with frantic energy, Baptista's slew of servants scurrying across the stage and Petruchio's odd household a riot of happy confusion. Bianca is played as a devilishly smart chameleon, obviously an infuriatingly spoiled brat to Kate, but an amiably submissive pet to her father and a pretending-to-be-daft blonde trophy to her array of suitors. A telling moment comes early on when Bianca gushes in flirty laughter while being pushed on the swing by three idiotic suitors: when Kate dumps a bucket of water over Bianca's head from the balcony, the audience erupts into spontaneous applause, the identification with and sympathy for the mercurial Kate - and antipathy toward Bianca - plainly apparent.
In a newspaper interview, Gaines noted that she saw her Kate and Petruchio as falling in love instantly at first sight, and that she envisions "a lifetime of love" for them both. Gaines and her performers certainly accomplish this impression on stage. Late in the production, both Kate and Petruchio are individually spotlighted in swooning romantic moments, left bedazzled and speechless: at the wedding, Kate stands trembling in a center stage spotlight, looking quite unlike her usual self - vulnerable and needy - in her white brocade wedding gown, and after she kisses Petruchio with sultry passion on the street during 4.1 - a long and lingering intimacy - the normally in-charge Petruchio swoons and trembles himself, still in mid-pucker with his eyes closed, even after the kiss with Kate is over.
With the traditional costumes and setting, Gaines' approach to Taming of the Shrew is far from revisionist, and she is certainly is not an apologist for Kate's change in behavior. Rather, Wentworth's Petruchio ruefully goes through the machinations, showing the combative Kate her own actions with an almost apologetic mirror: he nods sadly and goes about his business after inquiring of the audience, "he that knows better how to tame a shrew / Now let him speak." Thatcher's Kate shows no surrender or submission but seems to startle herself in a surprised and happy realization, suddenly smiling at the notion that rather than being adversaries, she and Petruchio could indeed be an incredible team. Matching Shakespeare's falconry imagery, Kate's spirit is far from broken, and she soars in her newfound freedom. After the concluding speech that Thatcher plays as a reflection on what it means to be vulnerable and in love, she takes her father Baptista's hand in a subtle gesture of forgiveness, then pulls Petruchio happily to center stage. Their warm laughter is amplified, rising as the lights fade, but the production doesn't conclude until the lights come up on a dozing and hung over Christopher Sly, awakened from a drunken sprawl by a dog happily licking at his face. A fitting conclusion to charming production, memorable with Wentworth's virile Petruchio and especially the beautiful Thatcher's shrewd shrew, at once very sad and very strong, and still so achingly vulnerable.