Review: Taming of the Shrew

For the second year Lovers & Madmen have presented outdoor Shakespeare in West Hollywood’s beautiful Plummer Park and the quality of these shows is first rate. This year it was the famous “Battle of the Sexes” wherein the beautiful but bad-tempered Kate is being wooed near to death by the audacious and clever Petruchio. The excellent cast, under Bruce Cervi’s forceful direction, are at full throttle and the enthralled audience is full of glee to see this bitch tamed.

The challenge for any production of “Taming of the Shrew” is to neutralize the terrible misogyny of the play. Shakespeare might have been having troubles with his wife Anne Hathaway at the time (maybe) but in this romp he certainly lauded a man’s ability, through bodily strength and shrewd psychology, to break a fierce woman’s spirit.

If you are presenting this play you have to deal with what’s really going on. Petruchio is an adventurer looking for a rich wife and he doesn’t care if she’s fat, old or ugly. So much for a hero! Kate has an annoyingly gorgeous younger sister, who all the men are after, and who is also their father’s precious darling. To make Kate so beautiful (no matter what a character says in the play) causes immediate disbelief. Hey, with her looks and her money there would be a dozen young fortune hunters willing to tolerate her bad moods. After all, what are men’s fists for if not to knock some sense into contrary women. It’s been going on for centuries and Will Shakespeare should be ashamed of himself.

Breaking her spirit becomes the sport of the play and as I watched this superb production I grieved that they did not try to bring some other focus to it.

In this Plummer Park version, beautiful slender Charline Su and handsome virile Joshua Thomas were both in top form playing the traditional battle of dominance we expected. His abuse of her is certainly an effective comeuppance for having such a nasty disposition. However, the punishment does not fit the crime so the laughter at the violence done to her (and also to his servants) revealed an audience that apparently looks at cruelty as just another theatrical device.

I hope Lovers & Madmen will not be discouraged by my snippy comments and will be back next summer, with their excellent company, to bring Will alive again.

If you want to still catch this “Taming” before it dissipates into just a lovely memory get to Pasadena this Sunday, the 18th, at 3 p.m. at Levitt Pavilion in Old Town’s Memorial Park.

Morna Murphy Martell was the Broadway critic and New York bureau chief for the Hollywood Reporter in the 1980s. Martell started in theater as an actor on Broadway then worked as a playwright and director in London, Edinburgh and across the United States. She wrote a number of musicals with her ASCAP composer-lyricist husband, Ralph Martell, that were produced in California and New York.