[NEohioPAL] Review of Great Lakes Theater's "The Taming of the Shrew"

[Bob Abelman]

Great Lakes’ ‘Shrew’ tames Shakespeare’s chauvinism



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

  

When Great Lakes Theater last paid a visit to Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew,” the company was committing literary blasphemy and artistic alchemy.  It transported the masterwork from the 1590s to the 1980s, transmuted it from the Italian city of Padua to a fashionable L.A. boardwalk, and transformed it from a comedy to a burlesque-infused romp.  



“Shrew” revolves around an epic battle of the sexes and, in that Great Lakes production, Sara Bruner played “Kate the Cursed,” a gum-gnawing, obstinate-to-the-core hellcat intent on wreaking havoc on the antiquated conventions of courtship and marriage where women were expected to be silent and subservient. 



Bruner and colleagues played first-rate clowns who executed the production’s broad physical humor, of which there was plenty, with remarkable precision and spot-on timing. And the implicit 16th century sexism in the play – where, in the final scene, the men bet on which of their new wives is the most obedient – was cleverly camouflaged amidst the on-stage antics and raucous comedy. 



That was in 2011.  Bruner now directs GLT’s latest production and stages what at first appears to be a highly traditional rendition of the play that simply goes along with the sexism as the price one pays for staging Shakespeare.



For more of this article, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/bob_abelman/
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20190407/48938841/attachment.html>