A Very Clever Taming of Chauvinism

Next to Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” which often prompts outcries of anti-Semitism, the Bard’s “The Taming of the Shrew” runs second in subverting some current ideologies. The shrew’s apparent surrender to male dictates causes feminists to shake tight fists at the heavens and shriek through clenched teeth.

Director John Frederick Jones, in his staging for Shakespeare Orange County, might have hit on the key to halfway solve that problem. In the first place, he sets the scene with a group of wandering Elizabethan players taking an elaborate curtain call before the play begins, creating a joking framework at the start. There is an on-stage prompter, on-stage sound effects, including a very funny thunder sheet, and some unashamedly raucous slapstick, such as the Keystone Kops choreography among Petruchio’s servants. Petruchio even intones a few bars of Cole Porter’s “Kiss Me, Kate.”

Jones also has a delicious Katherine in Elizabeth Taheri, at the beginning justifiably screeching about the stupidity of men. Because Kate is the oldest daughter of Baptista (Raymond Lynch), her sister Bianca cannot even think of marriage until Kate is wed. And only Kate is shrewd enough to understand that her father’s dimness is easily outclassed by the callow dumbness of Bianca’s suitors. This is the straight line for Jones’ dramaturgical trick.

After Petruchio, the artful, cunning gentleman who weds Kate, berates and belittles her to distraction, when they are on their way home to visit Baptista (with Kate dragging Petruchio’s cart), Taheri suddenly collapses on the ground in an uncontrollable fit of giddy laughter. She has discovered the key to regain her control over the oblique pretensions of the male, how to tame her Petruchio. Simply agree with him.

The dialogue has not been altered, but the subtext has. Kate is suddenly liberated by a weapon stronger than macho bravado. Charm. Even her final speech about abiding by her lord and master’s decrees is tempered by Kate’s aria of laughter, her towering moment of revelation.

Carl Reggiardo’s Petruchio falls right in with this shading. He is certainly as romantic, commanding and suave a Petruchio as ever there was, but his Petruchio is totally unprepared for the subtle switch in power in this staging. It is a slight hint, but affects both characterizations enough to force at least a giggle out of the grimmest feminist.

As Bianca, Allison Barcott, with her coy grins, charms and delights the viewer and her silly swains. Barcott’s sense of humor is apparent in her quick glances and darting eyes, and it all works beautifully.

The shallow brain-power of Bianca’s suitors is highlighted by excellent comic performances by Roger P. Vontobel as Hortensio, Alex C. Ferrill as a kinetic but a little idiotic Lucentio and, especially, Michael Nehring in a virtuoso take as a ditsy, high-comic Gremio, the randy ancient who drools after Bianca.

Matthew Kelsey stands out as Lucentio’s wiser servant Tranio, and Peter Westenhofer has some silly but telling moments as Petruchio’s clown of a servant Grumio.

*

“The Taming of the Shrew,” Waltmar Theatre, Chapman University, 301 E. Palm, Orange. Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 3 p.m. Through Sunday. $24. (714) 744-7016. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.