Despite stellar cast and intriguing framing device,
'Shrew' remains problematic
Review by Catey Sullivan
Here's the thing about The Taming of the Shrew . It. Doesn't. Work. It doesn't matter how much text you add to reframe Shakespeare's 400+-year-old story. It doesn't matter where you transplant the tale of Kate the "shrew" and Petruchio, the man who "tames" her. It doesn't matter if the play is cast with all women or all men or with complete disregard of the binary. The Taming of the Shrew remains a play of steadfast, undeniable misogyny. It closes with one of the most stunning passages this side of
After several days of extreme mistreatment, Kate has been broken. She has become so subservient that she literally kneels at her husband's feet so as to properly worship her "lord," "keeper" and "sovereign." She shames the women around her for failing to display similar reverence to their masters. After all, Kate preaches, while women are at home "safe and secure," men must toil in "painful labor" to support the ostensibly indolent lives of their spouses.
There are only two ways this speech works in a contemporary context. One is if Kate has been replaced by a robot, a la "The Stepford Wives." The other is if Kate delivers it in a long-sleeved garment, and then sheds said garment in the final moments to reveal that she's just slashed her wrists because she'd rather die than succumb to Petruchio's dehumanizing, soul-crushing demands. Director Barbara Gaines takes neither tack for the Chicago Shakespeare production. The monologue remains as an ugly, regressive peon to the idea that women exist solely for the purpose of serving men.
I'll say this for Gaines' all-female Taming of the Shrew : It has a cast that cannot be faulted. To a one, the actors are superb. They deserve a better play.
Gaines has moved into a setting that allows for an obvious rebuttal of sorts to Shakespeare's text. With a framing device by Second City's Ron West, the tale of Kate and Petruchio becomes a play-within-a-play, as a band of Chicago women stage the show in 1919, on the very day the U.S. Senate voted on women's suffrage.
While riots and marches and protests clamor down Michigan Avenue, the ladies of the Columbia Women's Club rehearse in an opulently appointed clubhouse reminiscent of the Chicago Cultural Center. As Kate struggles to cope with total domination by a husband and an institution she loathes, the ladies of the Columbia Women's Club rehearse and fervently debate whether women should be allowed to vote.
West punctuates his framing device with audience-pleasing local references. Quips about the tourists and the Congress Hotel, the ever-losing Cubs, the popular vote having little impact on election outcomes - are all sure-fire laugh-generators.
Two things about using the women's suffrage moment as a means toward leaching the misogyny out of The Taming of the Shrew :
First, it makes the whole production feel like it's trying too hard. How to counterbalance the patriarchal odiousness of ? Insert suffragettes. Fill the stage with women who, in between scenes of a woman getting mightily abused, cry out for equal rights and give ardent speeches about sisterhood. Short of casting Gloria Steinem and Shirley Chisholm as Kate and Petruchio (or vice versa), it's tough to imagine a tidier way to try and counter the women problems inherent in .
Second, Gaines has reduced the suffragette movement to a G-rated romp. In real life, the suffragettes were force-fed via horrifying means, locked up in asylums, beaten bloody and imprisoned. Here, the women seem to view the marches and the riots just outside the rehearsal doors as a lark or a grand adventure. The most serious problem anyone has post-march or post-riot is a bout of histrionic hyperventilating, played for laughs. It's a maddeningly sanitized version of the era.
Gaines' cast is led by an engaging Heidi Kettenringas Mrs. Dorothy Mercer, who has taken on the directorial duties of the Columbia Women's Club production of "Shrew." Mrs. Mercer is adamantly pro-suffrage, and in Kettenring's portrayal, a woman with a gift for building bridges and de-escalating fraught situations. Her nemesis is Mrs. Mildred Sherman (Rita Rehn, nailing the imperiously entitled tone of someone long used to being the most powerful person in the room) who direly predicts that giving women the vote could "destroy families."
Within the world of the play-within-the-play, Kate is played by Mrs. Louise Harrison (Alexandra Henrikson). Mrs. Harrison starts rehearsals with great disdain for the pre-subdued Kate and the suffragette movement. Predictably, her views have been reversed by the final curtain. Petruchio is played with swagger and bravado by Mrs. Victoria Van Dyne (Crystal Lucas-Perry, who gives Petruchio the charm of a strutting peacock).
There are numerous supporting characters who stand out: As Mrs. Lucinda James (who plays Biondello), Lillian Castilloradiates light and laughter, bringing bumptious comedy to every scene she's in. As a stagehand who plays the lascivious old man Gremio, Hollis Resnik is (respectively) hilariously harried and skeevy. As Dr. Fannie Emmanuel, E. Faye Butler plays a dentist with a killer sense of acerbic wit. Dr. Emmanuel's observations about Alabama, Mississippi and Chicago cops are high points of the production. Cindy Gold also brings a bone-dry, razor-sharp sense of comedy as Mrs. Sarah Willoughby, a woman who yearns for a larger part. i
The design elements in are stunning. Kevin Depinet's gorgeous set has the soaring, architectural beauty of a Louis Sullivan or the Burnham and Root building. The sumptuous interior of the Columbia Women's Club is all vaulted ceilings and stained glass, with a graceful statuary that references the 1893 World's Fair. Equally excellent are Susan E. Mickey's elaborately detailed costumes, which pay homage to both the iconic bloomers of the suffragettes and the pantaloons favored by Elizabethan men. In color and cut, the garments also inform the characters who wear them.
This Taming of the Shrew is a fine production of a play that doesn't deserve the resources lavished on it. For all the prodigious talent on stage, remains an endorsement of systems and attitudes that make the world unsafe for women. Nothing can change that, not even a room full of crusading suffragettes.
The Taming of the Shrew continues through November 12th at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand (map), with performances Wednesdays 1:30pm & 7:30pm, Saturdays and Sundays 7:30pm, Saturdays 3pm & 8pm, Sundays 2pm. Tickets are $48-$88, and are available by phone (312-595-5600) or online through their website (check for availability of ). More information at ChicagoShakes.com. (Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes, includes an intermission)
Photos by Liz Lauren
E. Faye Butler (Dr. Fannie Emmanuel, Baptista, Nathaniel), Lillian Castillo (Mrs. Lucinda James, Biondello), Tina Gluschencko (Mrs. Beatrice Ivey Welles, Hortensio, u/s Mrs. Louise Harrison, Katherine), (Mrs. Sarah Willoughby, Vincentio, Joseph), Alexandra Henrikson (Mrs. Louise Harrison, Katherine), Ann James (Mrs. Elizabeth Nicewinder, Pedant, Nicholas, u/s Mrs. Judith Smith, Gremio, Peter), Heidi Kettering (Mrs. Dorothy Mercer, Tranio, haberdasher), Crystal Lucas-Perry (Mrs. Victoria Van Dyne, Petruchio), (Grumio, Mrs. Mildred Sherman, widow), Hollis Resnik (Mrs. Judith Smith, Gremio, Peter), Faith Servant (Mrs. Barbara Starkey, Curtis, tailor, officer, u/s Mrs. Emily Ingersoll, Bianca, Mrs. Lucinda James, Biondello), Katie Marie Smith (Miss Olivia Twist, Lucentio), Olivia Washington (Mrs. Emily Ingersoll, Bianca), Lynn Baber (u/s Mrs. Sarah Willoughby, Vincentio, Joseph, Mrs. Mildred Sherman, Grumio, widow), Sarah Dunnavant (u/s Miss Olivia Twist, Lucentio, Mrs. Dorothy Mercer, Tranio, haberdasher), Greyson Heyl (u/s Mrs. Beatrice Wells, Hortencia, Mrs. Barbara Starkey, Curtis, tailor, officer), Laurie Larson (u/s Dr. Fannie Emmanuel, Baptista, Nathaniel, Mrs. Elizabeth Nicewinder, Pedant, Nicholas), Patricia Lavery (u/s Mrs. Victoria Van Dyne, Petruchio, Mrs. Beatrice Wells, Hortensio).
behind the scenes
Barbara Gaines (director, conception), (additional text), Kevin Depinet (set design), Susan E. Mickey (costume design), Thomas C. Hase (lighting design), David Van Tieghem (sound design, original music), Richard Jarvie (wig, make-up design), Kevin Gudahl (verse coach), Roberta Duchamp (music director), Matt Hawkins (fight choreography), Deborah Acker, Dennis J. Conners (stage managers), Cassie Calderon (assistant stage manager), Rinska Carrasco (asst. director), Bob Mason, Nancy Piccione (casting), Liz Lauren (photos)
Tags: 17-0958, Alexandra Henrikson, Ann James, Barbara Gaines, Bob Mason, Cassie Calderon, Catey Sullivan, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Chicago Theater, Cindy Gold, Crystal Lucas-Perry, David Van Tieghem, Deborah Acker, Dennis J. Conners, E. Faye Butler, Faith Servant, Greyson Heyl, Heidi Kettering, Hollis Resnik, Katie Marie Smith, Kevin Depinet, Kevin Gudahl, Laurie Larson, Lillian Castillo, Liz Lauren, Lynn Baber, Matt Hawkins, Nancy Piccione, Olivia Washington, Patricia Lavery, post, Richard Jarvie, Rinska Carrasco, Rita Rehn, Roberta Duchamp, Ron West, Sarah Dunnavant, Susan E. Mickey, Thomas C. Hase, Tina Gluschencko, William Shakespeare
Category: 2017 Reviews, Adaptation, Catey Sullivan, Chicago Shakespeare, Navy Pier, New Work, Video, William Shakespeare, YouTube
