The recent student performance of Taming of the Shrew is what college Shakespeare adaptations are all about-a fresh, enthusiastically acted take on a text that has often been stilted by unimaginative productions. Most prominently, director Mike Markham cast most of the characters against gender, which results in a re-evaluation of the specific characters, and in a larger commentary on gender relations.
The story itself centers on a group of Italian suitors trying to marry Bianca, the sweet and gentle daughter of local lord Baptista Minola. Minola, though, won’t give his younger daughter’s hand in marriage unless someone agress to marry her older sister, Katherina, a rebellious, hot-tempered shrew.
The men devise a typically convoluted scheme to woo their women, which, of course, in the end works.
The plot is admittedly hard to follow, but a complete understanding of every twist wasn’t necessary to enjoying the production. The text is full of clever sexual innuendo, slapstick comedy, and witty banter between the various flirting couples which Markham played up adeptly.
Significantly, none of the characters actually cross-dressed, allowing the subtleties of their appearance and performance to convey a more complex message about gender identity.
Specifically, the ambiguity allows for a range of relative masculinity and femininity among the characters, which suggests that gender is not so clear-cut, and that gender-oriented dress or manner are merely society’s attempts at making distinct what is actually anything but.
In the current production, this plays itself out in many, and subtle ways. Because of the ambiguous clothing, we sometimes have a difficult time determining the gender of each character-some men are especially feminine, some women strangely masculine. For example, the romantic, and wistful young student Lucentio (a man) is played by an irrefutably feminine actress (Freshman Jen Fruzzetti), while the shrew herself is portrayed by the burliest member of the cast (Freshman Justin Wardell) as almost ragingly masculine.
Thus, in Markham’s version, the gender analogues of the characters’ personalities are reflected in their manner and appearance; a man’s (Lucentio) feminine characteristics of romanticism and dreaminess are depicted by casting him as a woman, and the anti-chauvinist revolt of the shrew is personified in her being played by a hulking, 6′2″ man.
The show itself was rough, in more ways than one.
Most obviously, the stage was the cracked concrete “amphitheatre” in front of Prince Hall, which lends itself to certain theatrical hazards. At one point, a group of noisy teenage bikers decided to camp out near the bushes right behind the audience, yelling to each other so loud that the actors were inaudible.
A little later, a powerful gust of wind knocked over one of the panels behind which the actors were changing. The acoustics were dismal-if an actress turned away from you during a speech, chances are most of her lines would be lost to the wind.
The play was carried, though, by the energy of the young actors, and by the ingenious gender and relationship games played by Markham’s staging, and by the comic genius of Shakespeare’s original text. Most importantly, though, the whole cast, many of whom were clearly unexperienced actors, seemed to havea lot of fun with the material, which proved contagious.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2001 at 12:00 pm and is filed under Cadenza. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.