New “Shrew” Lacks Love

Shrew - Jocelyn Maher and Rachel Guyer-Mafune (photo Giao Nguyen)

Shrew
Union Arts Center
Through 11/2/25
 
The blurb for this production, Shrew, said, “Girl meets boy. Girl hates boy. Girl agrees to marry boy against her will so her sister can get married too. Got it? Shrew uses the classic Shakespearian (Taming of the Shew) text — but inverted, upended, and overturned — to offer a modern-day perspective on how far we’ve come when it comes to love — and how far we still have to go.”
 
It is a new adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. But the promise was perhaps oversold on the “modern-day perspective.” Many playwrights have been updating Shakespeare’s plays these days because we all know the 1500s were not shining examples of egalitarian attitudes towards women. Sometimes, people will argue that Shakespeare himself took great pains in some of his plays to empower his women characters, so there’s that.
 
The Taming focuses on Kate, an independent-minded woman who doesn’t suffer fools lightly, and as Shakespeare’s language portrays her, is rude and indifferent. She’s “untamable.” Because of her dowery – and maybe because she’s pretty, Petruchio decides to marry her and sets out to prove that he can tame her. Essentially, he starves her, isolates her, and demands that she learn to accept his word as the law.
 
And it’s a comedy. All this does not mean I dislike the play. It really does need to be contextualized for its time. And this is one of his more egalitarian storylines, in spite of the barbaric plot line.
 
Bobbin Ramsey and Gabrielle Hoyt have created a new adaptation – but make no mistake: this is not not Shakespeare! It is not a rewriting of the text, a modern-vernacular play or one that takes the basic story and writes something contemporary. It’s 100% Shakespeare’s language.
 
Some of what Ramsey does, as director, is to cast women and nonbinary actors and only one male actor, Arjun Pande, in the play, along with a couple of puppets. That part of the reimagining doesn’t provide significant “modernity,” though it allows some of our great clowning actors to shine on the stage. Rachel Guyer-Mafune, Jasmine Joshua, Pilar O’Connell, and Ayo Tushinde band together and double-up on characters. Melanie Godsey has stepped in – on extra-short notice and with excellent dispatch – to contribute her foolery.
 
The use of puppets as a couple of older men ends up adding confusion rather than clarity, and the comedic hijinks of the suitors for Kate’s sister, Bianca, are muddied and lack reasons and intentions for what seems meant to simply provide more comedy and could have been cut to much better effect. Some actors also used a lot of their upper registers to speak, making their dialogue less than crisp.
 
Jocelyn Maher stomps around imperiously as Kate and has the range to play all of the emotions called for as she slowly changes her “shrewish” ways – but, as directed, it looks more like Stockholm Syndrome than taming. Directorial choices here also miss the opportunity to infuse Petruchio with any softness or vulnerability. He does what he does and says what he says with little opportunity to even know if he has any real feelings for Kate, at all.
 
The comedy is the point it seems. It’s a little broad for my taste. The women and nonbinary actors play the male roles so obviously that many in the audience find that funny and you might, too. It’s kind of cute and silly.
 
The best parts of the show are the tech designs. The colorful, versatile set by Parmida Ziaei, fabulous lighting effects by L.B. Morse, and the gorgeous and sometimes outrageous costuming by Danielle Nieves are all geared toward amping the fun. The collaboration between sound designer Meghan Roche and composer Erin Bednarz, is unexpected and delightfully out-of-the-box in contribution.
 
This adaptation feels more like ideas on paper that didn’t get quite fulfilled on stage. It was only near the end of the play that any kind of re-interpretation became apparent. I wanted to like this, and enjoyed some portions, and finally understood where the “modern” interpretation was supposed to be. Ultimately, it was a bit too little, too late.

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