Summary 
Charming modernization brings the battle of the sexes to 1950s Padua. A playful tone permeates the show, elevated by chemistry between the two lead performers. Lightning fast, perhaps overly so, and one wishes for a deeper delving into the taming romance. Clever use of Italian love songs and colorful supporting performances enhance an excellent production.
Design
Directed by Karen Kessler. Costumes by Kathryn Rohe. Set and lights by Peter Beudert. Sound by Aaron Paolucci.
Cast
Rebecca MacLean (Kate), Kathleen Logelin (Bianca), David Kortemeier (Hortensio), Walter Brody (Gremio), Michael Burns (Lucentio), Jimmie Galaities (Tranio), Jack McLaughlin-Gray (Baptista), Bradley White (Biondello), Philip Earl Johnson (Petruchio), Paul Erwin (Grumio) Steven Young (The Pedant).
Analysis
Chicago director Karen Kessler brings The Taming of the Shrew to 1950s Padua as the center piece for the Illinois Shakespeare Festival's twenty-third season, the first in their permanent theatre. Kessler stages a colorful romp with pratfalling characters wearing shades of white, beige, and yellow, including spats and hats. The set features a stage-length iron-railed balcony, a smaller gallery high above, and a sidewalk restaurant at stage left beneath a green and white striped awning. Signs announcing "Birra Peroni" and "Cinzano" adorn the brightly lit walls.
A wealth of traditional and modern Italian music - "hey mambo" - resonates as couples dance around a strutting waiter carrying a tray, and Gremio and Hortensio share a tango and nearly kiss. Kessler eliminates the Christopher Sly play-within-a-play induction and establishes her footloose and fancy-free tone from the outset. Lucentio bounds on stage for 1.1 in a yacht jacket and tennis racket, with Tranio behind him in sweater vest and beret, lugging golf clubs and swigging from a flask.
Festival star Rebecca Maclean plays the "fiend of hell" Kate as an intelligent but angry loner, and she first appears in a blue dress, her hair up, wearing dark sunglasses and wielding a cigarette and a drink. MacLean reveals the fiery nature of "Katharine the Cursed" as she shoves one gentleman backward and pours her drink from the balcony atop another's head, then takes Hortensio by the nose, kicks him in the shin, and flicks her cigarette at him, all before she even speaks.
Kate's hostility seems to emanate from outrage against the vanity and deception of her Barbie-doll younger sister, Bianca. The flirtatious Bianca wears a bright orange and red summer dress, and she poses, primps, and trifles with a wave of suitors. Lucentio even sits to create an admiring pencil sketch of her surface beauty. 2.1 shows Bianca hopping on bound feet after Kate in the balcony. Kate torments both her and her Barbie doll collection as Bianca cries out, her hands bound with panty hose. MacLean's Kate slices the hair from one doll, pulls the leg off another, and tosses a third down to the stage floor.
With the arrival of goateed Philip Earl Johnson as a muscular Petruchio - in Padua "to wive and thrive" - the battle of the sexes looms. Johnson's chain-smoking Petruchio wears a white T-shirt beneath a pale work shirt with its sleeves rolled high, and he exudes bravura confidence in his stylish sunglasses and 1950s-cool demeanor. He meets Gremio and Hortensio, who angrily scuffle with each other, and Petruchio nonchalantly shakes the hand of Hortensio between the legs of Gremio. Petruchio's mention of his deceased father Antonio becomes a running joke as he and then others pause to bow their heads and cross themselves.
Petruchio's droll longing to "have some chat with" Kate reveals a trace of worry over Kate's acid-tongued reputation, but their first sighting of one another is a long, magical moment of silence akin to Romeo and Juliet first gazing upon one another. Kate recovers and resorts to her defense-mechanism attitude: a look of disdain while smoking a cigarette with a hand on her hip. They conduct their 2.1 "wooing" - from which Johnson's Petruchio exits with an exhausted "whoo!" - around a kitchen table setting that looks as if lifted directly from a 1950s television situation comedy. The tension delights, even its serio-comic violence: she slaps him across the face; he grabs her from behind; their grapple becomes a cheek-to-cheek tango; he steps hard on her toe to halt her exit; she elbows him in the groin; and they finally kiss - "kiss me Kate" - long and slow, with great passion, before staggering to exit from opposite sides of the stage.
Kessler imbues the minor characters with colorful detail. Hortensio, a preppy nerd in pencil mustache and curly hair, becomes a cool cat musical instructor in black sweater, sunglasses, beret, and an acoustic guitar instead of a lute. The "rascal fiddler" snaps his fingers, points at and high fives members of the Baptista household, and he half-dances off stage, only to return a moment later with the guitar broken over his head by Kate. Later, after loosening the guitar strap that has curled around his neck to choke him, he plays and sings "Earth Angel" and "Smile Though Your Heart is Breaking." The confused Pedant drunkenly confronts the man he impersonates with a maid on one arm, a champagne bottle in hand, and his tie wrapped around his forehead.
An earnest Biondello nearly steals scenes in his purple cap, bow tie, thick glasses, and Keds sneakers with argyle socks. Biondello, always in a rush and confused as to whom he should refer to as "master," makes a running purse snatch of the Pedant's valise, then defends himself by hissing and bearing his "claws." He aids the Pedant, who pretends to be the father of Lucentio but forgets the boy's name, by sneezing the word "Lucentio" from his concealment downstage. Most notably, Biondello appears in the high balcony as the stage below is prepared for the 5.2 banquet. Wearing a purple servant's tuxedo and carrying a microphone, he croons, "That's Amore!" to the delight of the audience. The actor extends the moment, even after the set is dressed, and he speaks some verses and whispers another, before finishing with well-hit high notes to an enthusiastic ovation.
The 3.2 wedding scene begins with Kate in white wedding dress and the dapper Baptista in black tuxedo. Petruchio's tardy arrival comes with an offstage roar from a motorcycle, but the groom drives a maroon moped - complete with dangling fuzzy green dice - up a ramp and onto the stage. Petruchio wears an outrageous chicken-man costume, like that of an underpaid fast-food delivery boy. He wears red pants with long white fringe, a chicken-winged, red-and-white striped shirt with black bow tie, and a ludicrous white cap impaled with a yellow chicken. The stunned wedding party exits for an offstage ceremony and return after sound effects of Kate's violence. The priest staggers with an ice bag clutched to the side of his head, and a now barefoot Gremio waves goodbye to the newlyweds with his shoe as Petruchio carries Kate to his wagon, then exits flapping his "wings" as the first act concludes.
Kessler continues the play's spirited tone even in blackouts with Italian music - including "Santa Maria" - and the sets being changed by young men acting like swaggering Italian studs or high-kicking dancers. Light-hearted moments abound in the second act, such as the "fire" in Petruchio's home being the glow of coals in a battered charcoal grill, Petruchio's servants making a whistling search for his spaniel and crawling under a table to sneak a peek beneath Kate's dress, or Hortensio flinging some of Kate's food that has fallen from her plate to a nearby servant.
MacLean's Kate clings to her shrewish ways, launching a 4.1 slap attack against Grumio for food, then hitting him with a basket so he falls down stage-right stairs. In 4.3, when Kate screams and throws an empty food dish off stage, Petruchio illustrates the meanness of her behavior - and gives her a taste of her own medicine - when he imitates her shrill scream and throws her new clothing off stage from the same location.
Kessler presents the 4.5 journey to Padua not so much as a "taming" of Kate, but as Kate making a realization as to the nature of the game Petruchio plays and choosing to play it herself. They make their trip aboard a ramshackle bus that emerges on a platform beneath the balcony. The seedy passengers - including a strange man cuddling a live piglet - lurch with movement upon their rows of cushioned seats, as the driver clutches an over-sized steering wheel and blares a horn. Petruchio declares his wry, "I say it is the moon" from offstage, and Kate shouts back a vehement "I know it is the moon." Moments later, in her apology to the old man she has praised as a young virgin, Kate claims to have been "bedazzled by the sun," but turns and checks with Petruchio to see if he wants the sun to again be the moon. Far from "broken," MacLean's Kate turns her fiery spirit and sharp intellect to the playing of Petruchio's game.
Less disturbingly chauvinistic than it is a clever love story, Kessler's production features a fabulously costumed 5.2 wedding banquet. The women wear colorful evening gowns with jewels and gloves, and the men wear black tuxedoes with bow ties, except for Petruchio, who wears white. White decorative lights shine from strings along the balcony railing as the men light cigars. Johnson's confident Petruchio makes the wager that his bride will answer his "command" before either Bianca or the Widow will be summoned. When Kate complies, bringing each of the other brides along by twisting their fingers, Petruchio sits in amused silence as Kate breaks into the "marriage" speech, apparently pleased that he has found someone to not only be his mate, but his equal in playing spirited intellectual games.
Petruchio and Kate gaze at each other lovingly as the other newlywed couples bicker. Kate must remind him to collect the money he has won, because, pointedly, playing a game with Kate was more important to Petruchio than winning money from Lucentio and Hortensio. After another long kiss, they climb to the balcony and divide their winnings - probably evenly - from the beshrewed husbands below, and Kessler's excellent production concludes.
Fittingly for such a whimsically triumphant production of a potentially offensive text, when Johnson and MacLean return to the stage for curtain call, they receive a delighted standing ovation, and Johnson gently places Petruchio's ridiculous chicken-hat upon MacLean's head.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.18, No.3, Summer 2000.