O.C. THEATER : So Farce, So Good for Aaron : The director of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ is counting on a modern-dress framing device to make things more insightful for the audience.

Director Jules Aaron, whose triumphant staging of “Measure for Measure” has just closed at the Grove Shakespeare Festival, is about to pose a formidable question.

With his latest production, “The Taming of the Shrew,” which begins previews Thursday at the Grove’s Festival Amphitheatre, he asks: “What if a young Orange County dude were to wander into a closed invitational dress rehearsal of ‘Shrew,’ knowing just the usual cliches about Shakespeare, and were to be drawn into the play as one of its characters?”

Would the amphitheater: 1) explode? 2) levitate? or 3) provide the young man with a rare opportunity for transformation and, by extension, give to audiences an enriched theatrical experience?

If you didn’t guess 3, you can stop reading now. Shakespeare is probably too tough for you. And if you did guess, well, all I can say is your powers of deduction are simply amazing. You might as well be a mind reader because that is exactly what Aaron says he thought when he chose to use that scenario as a modern-dress “framing device” for the traditional tinker’s prologue to “Shrew.”

“When I agreed to do the show,” he said, “I wanted to find a way of signaling that it’s about transformation--specifically the ability to change and open up to love, which is what I think ‘Shrew’ is all about for Kate and Petruchio (the leads played by Robin Goodrin Nordli and Carl Reggiardo). It seemed to me if I could incorporate the idea of transformation into the bracketing of the show, I could make a comment at the same time about the ability of theater to change our lives.”

OK, let’s just cut to the chase.

Is “The Taming of the Shrew”: 1) a farce? 2) a psychodrama? 3) a domestic social tract? or 4) a feminist marriage manual?

Now this is a really tough multiple-choice question because, as you can see, it has four possible answers. If you chose 1, boy, you are smart.

“The basic playing style is farce,” Aaron said. “I’ve always felt it’s in the text. The stakes for the characters are so high that the comic manifestation of them needs to be played as farce. The energy level of the show, which calls for a lot of physicality, is also farce.”

You should know, of course, that the best farces tend to have “enormous stakes, real stakes,” he continued. “Think of Joe Orton’s plays. Think of Moliere’s.”

And what the heck, think of Plautus.

“There’s a kind of Roman comedy feel to ‘Shrew,’ ” Aaron says, noting that it’s one of Shakespeare’s “great servant plays,” in addition to having a wonderful subplot about Kate’s younger sister Bianca and her suitors. “The Roman trappings are in there with the wily servants Tranio and Grumio.”

So, if you combine the high seriousness of transformation and the low comedy of farce, do you get 1) a hit? 2) a flop? 3) a pie fight? 4) a deepened appreciation of the play? or 5) new meaning in your life?

Boy, these questions get tougher all the time. Nobody could possibly know the answer to this one until the show begins its four-week run.

* The Grove Shakespeare Festival will give a preview performance of “The Taming of the Shrew” on Thursday at 8:30 p.m. at the Festival Amphitheatre, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove. Tickets: $12. The play’s regular run (tickets: $16 to $23) opens Friday and runs through Sept. 21 with performances Thursday through Sunday at 8:30 p.m. Information: (714) 636-7213.

SEPTEMBER SURPRISE: Also getting under way later this week is George Bernard Shaw’s “Heartbreak House” at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa. You could have predicted it. Well, almost.

Over the years, Shaw revivals have led off several SCR Mainstage seasons: “Man and Superman” in 1990; “Misalliance” in 1987 and “Saint Joan” in 1984.

Many Shavians consider “Heartbreak House” among the Irish playwright’s best. Shaw himself wrote that, when “properly played,” the comedy provides “three nights’ entertainment for the price of one.” He always was good at touting his work. And as cast by SCR artistic director Martin Benson, who’s directing the production, this revival is a good bet to be properly played.

Benson has assembled a dynamite company, including Frances Conroy, John Vickery and Paxton Whitehead (all three are making their SCR debut and collectively have the sort of Broadway and Off-Broadway credits to make a West Coast theatergoer’s head swim), as well as Kandis Chappell, Richard Doyle, Hal Landon Jr., Devon Raymond, Dan Kern and Jeffrey Allan Chandler.

“Heartbreak House,” as Shaw noted in 1919 in a nearly 50-page preface, “is not merely the name of the play. . . . It is cultured, leisured Europe before the war.” He meant, of course, World War I. “When the play was begun, not a shot had been fired,” Shaw continued, “and only the professional diplomatists and the very few amateurs whose hobby is foreign policy even knew that the guns were loaded.”

He was never one to hide his prescience. But while SCR goes along with him, noting in a press release that the play was written from 1913 to 1916, the editors of the authoritative Bodley Head edition of Shaw’s collected plays beg to differ. They note: “Composition begun 4 March 1916; completed May 1917.” And, they add: “Shaw stated on several occasions that the play was begun before the war, but all surviving evidence contradicts this.”

Take your pick.

* Preview performances of “Heartbreak House” by Bernard Shaw will be given Friday through Sept. 5 at South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. Show times: Tuesday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7:30 p.m. Preview tickets: $15 to $22. The play’s regular run (tickets: $23 to $32) is Sept. 6 through Oct. 6 with performances at 8 p.m. Tuesday through Friday; 2:30 and 8 p.m. Saturday and 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Sunday. Information: (714) 957-4033.