Pitching woo

URI Theatre stages a sharp Shrew

by Bill Rodriguez

THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, by William Shakespeare. Directed by Anthony Estrella. At URI Theatre through May 1.

Until the day the final marital skirmish in the Battle of the Sexes is fought, theatergoers will somewhere be able to see Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. The play remains a perennial favorite -- you can catch it at Westerly's Shakespeare In the Park this summer -- giving both fervid feminists and card-carrying male chauvinists plenty to slap their knees about.

Lovers mercenary and noble, doe-eyed and scheming. False identities, a bamboozled father, surreptitious motives. Banter as fast and furious as swordplay. URI Theatre currently is having a grand old time making fun of all the gender furor.

The comedy is one of the Bard's earliest and not one of his soundest structurally. Fortunately, an irrelevant two-scene introduction is dropped, but there's no getting around it opening with the sub-plot love relationship. To wit: upon entering Padua, Lucentio (Joel Van Iderstine) is smitten at his first sight of Bianca (Kerry Carney), the beautiful daughter of Signore Baptista (Vincent Guglietti). However, before she can wed, her older sister Katharina (Taryn DeVito) must be married off. That's easier proposed than resulting in a proposal, though, since Kate has a widespread reputation for her hot temper and scolding tongue.

Into the city strides Petruchio (Joshua Willis), who announces to his Paduan pal Hortensio (Anthony John Luciano) that he is out to "wive it wealthily in Padua." Sight-unseen he takes the challenge of wedding and bedding the infamous Kate. When they finally meet, he has a difficult time parrying her rapier wit and is resolutely patient at every offense.

DeVito is a feisty Kate, shrewd more than shrewish, getting into the fun of the wordplay as much as the little rhetorical victories ("If I be waspish, best beware my sting"). Costume designer David T. Howard gives her male apparel (everyone is in 19th-century garb) in the first confrontation scene with her betrothed. But DeVito doesn't masculinize her manner as much as make her character heedless of feminine wiles. If this Kate lacks anything, it might be a greater sense of devilish fun at her victories.

For his part, Willis's Petruchio reveals the earnest intensity of someone who feels he's right-minded in his patriarchal arrogance. The alternative is a Petruchio simply gleeful at putting his wife in her place, which would be rather creepy. (Stop and think about what you're usually laughing at in the next production you attend, and see if you approve.) The payoff here is the honest warmth this Petruchio reveals at the end, when his still-assertive wife has decided to fit into Elizabethan society and family.

Clearly, director Anthony Estrella, a consistently impressive actor at SFGT, is taking pains to not trivialize this take on the comedy. In other stagings, Kate's temper often comes across as undergoing a lifelong bout of PMS rather than reacting to the frustrations of Elizabethan life -- women were for the first time being educated and gaining self-awareness, after all. Since Elizabethan standards of gender (in)equity are relatively barbaric from our perspective, it is a good idea to play these relationships for more than laughs.

The trade-off here is for somewhat less knockabout physical comedy than is usual in The Taming of the Shrew -- one memorable confrontation scene I recall took place in a boxing ring. Without slowing the pace to a trudge, the wit of the banter is emphasized more than ego-buffeting winces. Some punch lines are not accompanied by actual punches, you might say. By the end, Kate has as much personality as at the beginning; it is just more thoughtfully expressed. Her spirit is by no means crushed. I would have enjoyed somewhat more physical humor upon opportunity, which I don't think would have diminished the sarcastic dimension of the biting banter. But then I'm a pushover for a good pratfall.

The Taming of the Shrew may not be Shakespeare's best comedy, and its 16th century sexism may rankle. But consider it a kind of historical-perspective therapy, and the next time Jesse Ventura speaks his mind, it might be easier to take.