When Petruchio says this to his headstrong wife Katherina, it marks a moment of truce in the full-scale marital warfare that has marked their relationship from the start. Katherina, one of Shakespeare’s strongest female characters, is a woman known for her temper, for smashing lutes over the heads of her music instructors, and tying up her younger sister. In marriage, Petruchio promises to be the one to “bring you from a wild Kate to a Kate conformable as other household Kates.”
At the end of the play, he has succeeded. Katherina has become an obedient wife.
It’s a message that seems difficult or even repugnant to contemporary ears, which is why director Ed Sylvanius Iskandar says he made the decision to cast only men in this production at Washington, D.C.’s Shakespeare Theatre Company:
What Iskandar considers bitterly ironic might also be considered paternalistic—the male director seeking to protect women from the language of the play by leaving them out of it altogether. In the process of protecting an actress from the monstrosity of Katarina’s final speech, he also denies her the chance to speak some of the sharpest and wittiest lines Shakespeare gives any of his heroines.
This is not meant to demean the acting of Maulik Pancholy, who played Katherina, in any way. He exhibited a remarkable control over the character, as did Oliver Thornton, in the role of Bianca. Overall, this is a well-staged and well-acted production—it just isn’t The Taming of the Shrew.
On one level it is difficult to critique a performance like this because it exhibits such technical skill. Striving for the bustle of a Renaissance market, the building on stage allowed the actors to pop in and out of sight, remaining visible to the audience, but out of sight and out of mind to each other. During intermission, the audience was invited on stage to join the wedding party, with music and cake—and the character of Hortensio inexplicably donning the Comtessa’s veil and heels.
At times, casting and costuming decisions merely confused the production. One of the suitors was dressed as a priest, to the confusion of more than a few audience members. Another was cut out altogether.
This just scratches the surface of what was altogether a strange adaption.
In addition to adding new music, the production rather heavy-handedly edited the original text. At times, this was somewhat subtle, exchanging an arcane word for its modern rendering. In other scenes, Iskandar opted to insert new images and excise entire chunks of lines. Frequently, it was hard to determine his rationale for doing so, as in the wooing scene, where Petruchio’s praise of Katherina as “young and light” is met by the tart rejoinder:
“Too light for such a swain as you to catch;
And yet as heavy as my weight should be.”
It’s puzzling as to why the lines were replaced. Is there something wrong with the joke about her weight?
Judicious edits like this appear throughout the play, likely appearing in part to make time for more than a dozen musical interludes, which were, quite frankly, disappointing. Rather than building upon the themes of the play, the music largely seemed like an interruption. Few lyricists, including Duncan Sheik, benefit from a direct comparison of their work and the poetry of Shakespeare and the cast, while rich in acting experience, frequently lacked background in musical theater. The result was more than one number when the voices wavered on the edge of off-key. And the entire gender-bending experience reached a crescendo when Rich Kammerly sang the role of the Contessa in a lovely baritone and a dress.
On one level it is difficult to critique a performance like this because the production itself exhibits such technical skill. Still, theatergoers looking to watch The Taming of the Shrew as Shakespeare wrote it should seek elsewhere.
