Summary 
A series of oddities - several folksy musical interludes, a gender-bent Grumio, Puritans drowning a witch, Queen Elizabeth I as the hunter deluding the drunken Sly, and a club-footed Kate - all meant to add depth and resonance, but only barely succeed, moreso obstructing a romantic battle of wills enacted by two strong lead performers.
Design
Directed by Peter Hinton. Designed by Santo Loquasto. Lights by Robert Thomson. Sound by Todd Charlton. Music by Allen Cole. Fights by John Stead. Choreographed by Jo Leslie.
Cast
Evan Buliung (Petruchio), Irene Poole (Katherina), Ben Carlson (Tranio), Adrienne Gould (Bianca), Jeff Lillico (Lucentio), Stephen Ouimette (Baptista), Lucy Peacock (Grumio), Ins Choi (Christopher Sly), Barbara Fulton (Queen Elizabeth), Juan Chioran (Gremio), Paul Dunn (Curtis), Victor Ermantis (Vincentio), Randy Hughson (Hortensio), Patrick McManus (Biondello).
Analysis
Peter Hinton begins The Taming of the Shrew with the least odd in a series of oddities, a sing-along folk ballad belted out by a short-haired Lucy Peacock. The comical song - nicely sung by Peacock doubling as a naughty and bawdy female Grumio - tells a cautionary tale of the perils awaiting young brides within the institution of marriage.
Traditionally staged, the production's set is dominated by a series of long wooden ramps, several wooden ladders leading to a platform above, and heavy squat wooden winches around the perimeter of the stage. The second oddity is an unexplained witch-drowning, with a struggling young woman, bound by the ankles and wrists, dropped into a wood-slatted water tank by a group of self-satisfied men, apparently Puritan church elders. Many audience members seemed confused by the brief prelude, which was apparently intended by Hinton to downplay the severity of Petruchio's physical breaking of Katherina, putting a domestic taming into the historical context of witch hunts and executions. One audience member wondered aloud if the scene was a depiction of a dunk tank at a small-town carnival.
Hinton follows oddity with oddity, presenting the Christopher Sly induction with the drunken peasant confronted at a quaint inn within rural England not just by a wealthy hunter and hunting party but by Queen Elizabeth I herself. The royal presence further lightens the taming of the shrewish Kate by embedding the taming within the artificial context of a simple romantic comedy presented at the behest of a masculine and powerful Queen, who is pointedly deceiving and teasing a drunken man. Sly's supposed wife is portrayed by a gruesomely un-pretty male actor in a blonde pig-tailed wig and garish make-up that appalls even Sly. Queen Elizabeth, flattered by the enormous portrait image of her upon a scrim draping across upstage, settles in downstage right for the performance of the play set in Padua, and she frequently comments and makes pithy remarks, at one point rising to join Peacock's Grumio in a tap-dance accompaniment to another folk ballad.
Elizabeth wears the same elaborate gown as in the portrait - stiff-shouldered, neck-braced, hooped at the hips - with a white stole, flaming red hair, and strings of shining pearls.
Irene Poole makes an impressive Stratford Festival debut as a pretty and witty, wounded and defensive Kate. Her Kate is book smart and quick-witted, looking like a librarian with her leather-bound book and wearing a nun-style wimple head-dress and a plain black gown, her jaw jutting and her eyes as if near tears. Hinton - in yet another oddity - burdens Poole's Kate with a club-footed limp, the justification apparently from Petruchio's musing, "Why does the world report that Kate does limp?" The book-wormish Kate is portrayed as a sympathetic victim, quick to become defensive, as if accustomed to often being laughed at, and quick to anger, as if accustomed to being infuriated with - and incited by - the true shrew Bianca.
Evan Buliung portrays Petruchio as a swaggering swashbuckler with a droll delivery - heavy with sighs and exhausted looks - who lies somewhere between world-weary and perpetually hung over. Brawny and virile, with long hair and a bemused smirk, Buliung's Petruchio resembles a Musketeer going to seed. The chemistry between Kate and Petruchio is immediate - they share a pervasive sense of melancholy - he offering a single flower and suddenly looking like a schoolboy, abruptly energized, and she is literally stopped in her tracks and gazing at him like a schoolgirl, suddenly silenced, a book tucked under one arm. Their interaction of course becomes physical, Kate in pursuit while brandishing a wooden foot stool, but unfortunately hobbling along the stage upon her club-foot like a female Richard III. At one point, Poole's Kate mounts Petruchio carnally, aiming to cudgel him with her leather book. When Buliung's Petruchio affects an escape and counters her wasp-sting threat with his bawdy "my tongue in your tail" remark, Buliung turns and half bows to acknowledge an appreciative round of applause from the audience.
Supporting characters are well played with some fine comic moments, like the neurotic Baptista lapsing into gleeful giggles and waggling his fingers at the prospect of Kate becoming betrothed, or the sugary sweet Bianca - after being clouted with a flower by Kate - nibbling at pink cotton candy on a stick before grappling in moaning emotion with Lucentio and sliding in a tangled heap of passionate limbs down one of the ramps. Peacock's Grumio - referred to as a man but obviously a short-haired woman with a pronounced cleavage - laughs off a flamboyantly foppish Biondello and confronts the aged and trembling Gremio - stooped over and hunch-backed - hanging her master's hat upon the old man's absurdly protruding codpiece.
With excellent leads and colorful supporting characters, the musical and dance interludes - while well choreographed - tend to obstruct the drive of the production, with Bianca's music lesson extending into a dance sequence, Grumio's "we were widows merry" song being concluded by the Queen herself, and the Queen and Sly opening the second act with a duet of "my love in my arms" in flickering orange candlelight. Another song ends in a blackout after the tumultuous wedding scene - with Buliung's Petruchio lurching through the ceremony wearing feathers, some scattered pieces of battered armor, and wielding a broken sword - and the action moves to Petruchio's home. The duplexed set includes a bridal chamber above and an interior below with a hog's head hanging from a long clothes-line along with links of sausage. Buliiung's outraged tough-love theatrics, including wild tosses of meat across the stage, play like a mock comparison to Kate's shrewish tantrums, and Poole's Kate seems to get the point rather quickly. Amid the chaos and the shouting with the violet-clad tailor, Kate sits calmly at the table across from Petruchio - and within an intimate moment - they share a bemused smile before Kate offers him a drink from her cup. And in 4.1 later, after Kate refuses - mostly from common sense rather than from defiance - to acknowledge the sun as the moon, she takes Petruchio's hand in hers and they stroll together side by side while half-embracing, similarly attired in shawl and poncho, and he playfully plants his big hat atop her head.
Hinton's production concludes with another song by Peacock's Grumio then a solo number by the Queen. Sly reluctantly begins to get intimate with the man who pretended to be his wife - seductively removing the wig - but there's no true revelation so Sly's shock seems artificial. As the troupe remove wigs and beards and mustaches, then their costumes, the lights fade on a musically rich three-hour production that truly entertains only when not diverted - however interestingly - from the compelling interaction between the lead characters.