All Shrewed Up

When Katharina enters-two of them, mind you-she is both black and

white, male and female, new and old. Is this Shakespeare? In Shrew

You!, this is only the beginning.

Chewing the Bard apart, Shrew You! is the newest

production from the Berkeley dramatic art department; the show opened

last Friday at Zellerbach Playhouse. Adapted and refined through a

series of workshops with dramatic art students, Reid Davis's

production is a skewed and noisy rendition of Shakespeare's classic,

The Taming of the Shrew.

Click for larger image

twisting a classic story with relentless abandon. This is anchored by

a method of mirroring-there are two Petruchios, two Katharinas and

two Grumios. Each actor for each character evenly divides

Shakespeare's dialogue-one in contemporary clothing, one in

Elizabethan garb; one actor male and one female. Confusing enough?

That's not all, the show says.

A jolting introduction effectively does away with the

play-within-a-play structure of the original. It seems so

on-the-surface, but we soon come to realize that the "inner" and

"outer" plays of The Taming of the Shrew are mixed, mashed and

imploded into one in Shrew You!

The nuts and bolts of the production aptly serve their

purposes. Jake Rodriguez's audio work for Shrew You! feels

like the soundtrack to a "Tom & Jerry" cartoon, as the scenes are

well-paced, aided by a Kate Edmunds setpiece that has so many opening

and closing windows and revolving doors, it's virtually transparent.

As the curtain rises, we witness a salacious and bitter

homosexual encounter between two performers who later take on the

roles of Hortensio and the modern-male Petruchio.

An underlying homoerotic tension emerges as the modern

Petruchio (an intensely virile Brendan Wolfe) interacts with

Hortensio (Danny Etcheverry, gifted with a coy sense of timing and

sweetly deadpan delivery). Lashing out at the modern-female Katharina

becomes this Petruchio's secret way of validating his masculinity.

(Later, that goal gets thrown out the window.) He clashes with the

modern Katharina (well-played by Charise Greene) in violent and

disturbing outbursts.

Where the modern pair's interactions are dark, the

Elizabethan pair of leads take on a lighter version of the play's

famous scenes. The female-traditional Petruchio (Sarah Arlen is

bombastic and clever) and the male-traditional Katharina (mugged

expertly by Steven Kelly) behave as Shakespearean convention dictates.

This charade lasts until the second act, where the tones

are reversed. The modern pair is suddenly conscious of its mode of

performance; they break character and ditch their time-tested fates

in favor of others' love. The Elizabethan pair then takes on the tone

of dark oppressiveness.

The result is an arresting and didactic approach to

confronting gender. We see a man (played by a woman) caging a woman

(played by a man), stripping her of her hair, dressing her in

tattered clothes and presenting Shakespeare's story as one centered

mostly on the brutal treatment of women.

As if to confound its themes even further, the production

makes unavoidable jabs at race issues. Racial oppression is

implicitly conjured as we see Kelly-a black actor, wigless-locked in

a cage or subjected to harsh whip-cracking.

With the question of race in tow, Shrew You! exposes its

namesake as a keenly sadistic tale, long before the Marquis de Sade

ever put quill to paper. This process of exposure, however, is a

strange one.

Inherent to Shrew You! is its use of the "clown

show" tradition, and this is where the trouble lies. Slapstick and

pratfalls are so cumbersome and exaggerated they exasperate. (A nod

at The Matrix-or is it Scary Movie?-is still

appreciated.) At their highest points, the farce sequences are

chaotic and utterly confusing.

Somehow, the extreme comedy and serious revisionism never

mesh. Whether intended or not, the resulting reaction is a sense of

uneasy distrust. Is this a farce trying to be darkly tragic? Or a

dark tragedy trying to be farcical? Or just some big mistake?

The latter certainly not being true, the former two

questions render viewers happily ambivalent.

Perhaps Shakespeare would be pleased.

Tags: