Theatre review: Take on 'Shrew' is anything but tame at Rexville

The quickest way to step out of your everyday world this summer? Get tickets, bring your lawn chair, blanket and jacket and get thee to “The Taming of the Shrew” at the Rexville Blackrock Amphitheatre. It opened Friday, half of Shakespeare Northwest’s season’s theme of “Fathers and Daughters,’ in repertoire with “The Tempest.”

No father, here Baptista (a mild, patient Devin Knowles), ever had a daughter like Katherine (Haylie Conchelos, properly strong and stubborn), though every parent wants a daughter like Bianca (demure, mild Ashleigh Nelson).

In 16th century Padua, no younger daughter is wed until the eldest is. A slew of suitors (Hortensio, Gremio and Lucentio) seek Bianca. Luckily Petruchio (Derick Dong, assertive and energetic) comes on the scene. He seeks his fortune through marriage into a family of means.

Well, Petruchio can help Hortensio. Hortensio tells his old friend “none shall have access unto Bianca/Till Katherine the curst have got a husband.”

Every character, including Baptista and Bianca, find Katherine so.

Petruchio is undeterred, meets the father and pursues Katherine, teasing her with compliments. But his sweet words come with a strong hand. Will this be a fight to the death?

The cast revels in the physical comedy. They are loud, energetic, slapping, pushing and even wrestling.

Petruchio and Kate’s first scene together is a wonderful clever trading of insults: he is a buzzard, she a turtle, then a wasp; she says she will sting; he replies he will pluck it out. And on the exchange goes. If you fast forward to the real 1950s it could be Jackie Gleason insulting his wife Alice on “The Honeymooners” or Archie and Edith Bunker in the 1970s “All in the Family.”

Petruchio plays with Kate’s mind, telling her “For thou are pleasant, gamesome, passing courteous,/But slow in speech, yet sweet as spring-time flowers:/Thou canst not frown, thou canst not look askance,/Nor bite the lip, as angry wenches will,/Nor hast thou pleasure to be cross in talk.”

Kate is not fooled, but furious.

The comedy is physical as well as verbal. Petruchio forces a ring on Kate’s finger; it is tight and she cannot pull it off.

Hortensio (Nate Wheeler, a playful schemer) disguised as a teacher of music, plays a lute. Kate hits him with it, breaking it. It will break again when he is playing for Bianca.

And there is the Shakespearean switching of roles, the rich Lucentio (an androgynous though male-ish Lindsey Hayes) changing places with his tutor Trania (Hannah Cafarello, another strong, though feminine, woman), so as the tutor Trania, Lucentio can win Bianca’s heart.

Veteran troupe member Carolyn Travis plays Gremio, in her typical strong, anchoring way, with nuance and humor.

Within a week Petruchio and Katherine are married. That is just the start of his breaking her. Kate come to the wedding in a white gown. Petruchio has green and yellow plaid pants, a bright yellow shirt, red suspenders and an orange fedora. She is aghast. Then, no reception but he throws her over his shoulder and up the aisle – of the theatre – they go.

Poor Kate. Taken away to an inn, he teases and starves her both, pulling the meat out of her mouth and disposes of it. Another famous scene, well done, has the defiant Kate still fighting when Petruchio calls the sun the moon and she names it for what it is. Not yet at the scene’s end she says: “since we have come so far,/And be it moon, or sun, or what you please:/And if you please to call it a rush-candle,/Henceforth I vow it shall be so for me.”

When he is done, she caves: “Then, God be bless’d, it is the blessed sun:/But sun it is not, when you say it is not;/And the moon changes even as your mind./What you will have it named, even that it is;/And so it shall be so for Katherine.”

The play is imaginatively set in 1950s Southern California. Malibu, Ventura and other locales substitute for Verona and Italian towns. More, directors Lydia Nelson and Kat Abdalla’s framing device of an alcoholic Christiana Sly (Maia Newell-Large, a marvelous drunk) watches the show on TV. Newell-Large is worth the price of admission, talking back to the “TV” on occasion, advising “Marry first. Hang second.”

Shakespeare introduces “Shrew” starting with the drunken Sly in an alehouse pouring out his woes, saying “What, would you make me mad?”

This show is on the verge of madcap. It is physical and energetic and fun throughout.

The costumes are very 1950s.Kudos to their designers and purveyors.

The cast is primarily female, turning upside down the all-male actors of the 1590s, when “Shrew” was written. Cheers fo good performances throughout.

It plays weekends rotating with “The Tempest.” Times and tickets: shakesnw.org/.