The Taming of the Shrew

Reviewed by Steven Leigh Morris
Independent Shakespeare Company in Griffith Park
Through August 29

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Photo by Grettel Cortes

That David Melville should bring La Dolce Vita into his family-friendly outdoor staging of Shakespeare’s knotty Italian comedy makes sense: Italian comedies of the 1960s are no less dodgy, regarding their sexual politics, than the amused brutality towards a defiant spouse found in Taming of the Shrew’s central story. Independent-minded, embittered Katherine (Melissa Chalsma) turns obedient only after being violently, jocularly wooed by her flippant suitor/husband Petruchio (Luis Galindo). This is every tyrant’s fantasy.

The complementary point in both Shakespeare’s play, and Melville’s staging of it, is what’s swirling around that central story: Katherine’s docile younger sister Bianca (Erika Soto) joins a Widow (Ashley Nguyen) in morphing from wilting flowers into iron maidens, once they’ve been gently courted and wedded. See, fellas, how far traditional romantic courting will get you?

The only way to get what you want is to beat your disagreeable partner into submission, the way Petruchio also wallops his cowering servant (Richard Azurdia) – who gets beaten even when he doesn’t disagree. (Getting beaten is a running gag.) Never mind La Dolce Vita, this is The Three Stooges via Lucky and Pozzo in Waiting for Godot. All the world’s a circus.

In fact, Melville closes his production with a food-fight, the chaos that ensues when free will gets free reign. So how do we get the trains to run on time? It starts with heavy boots, then moves on to heavy kicks.

Expanding this play and production’s themes beyond courtship and marriage will take you directly to Ukraine and the West Bank, raising the question: When do you try to speak courteously with people who disagree with you, and when is it more prudent to bomb them into submission? Kate and Petruchio are allegories, minor players on a much larger stage.

Perhaps The Taming of the Shrew is ultimately a play about respect, and Shakespeare’s conviction that most people either don’t get much or don’t deserve much in this wasps’ nest world. It’s enough to make you throw up your hands, or just throw up, or go to the circus for diversion.

Jenny Foldenauer’s costumes dress all this up in clown rags with patches – can’t not mention Katherine’s play-opening gown in which Chalsma wields Kate’s power not only with surliness but with stunning La Dolce Vita sexiness. There’s one tiny-but-sizzling moment in which the now-servile Katherine listens to her husband’s proud compliments. She glares out at the audience without saying a word, because her eyes say it all: “You think I really believe his shit? You think I’m not acting?”

Galindo gives Petruchio a wry, Burt Reynolds-ish impishness – at his wedding, he’s donned in a buttocks-revealing thong just to vex his ambivalent bride. If you see ISC’s accompanying Twelfth Night, to watch Galindo transform from the fool Malvolio to the stud Petruchio is certainly a perk.

This production, like Twelfth Night (which Chalsma directed), comes marbled with ballads and ditties and every attempt imaginable to distract us from Shakespeare’s view, even in a comedy such as this, that the world is savage beyond salvation.

Independent Shakespeare Company at the Old Zoo in Griffith Park, in rep, call for schedule; through Aug. 29. Free. 818 (710) 6306, www.iscla.org