Production: Taming Of The Shrew
Writer: William Shakespeare
Director: Peter Hinton
Where: Stratford Shakespeare Festival of Canada
Run: May 19^th - October 25^th 2008
Theatre: Festival Theatre 

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey (Ontario Correspondent - Canada) 

Guilded in Elizabethan sight and sound, director Peter Hinton's Stratford Shakespeare Festival gem Taming Of The Shrew is delicious, playful and just a little bit saucy. Hinton transformed The Odyssey last year for Stratford, and I must admit to my trepidations of his ‘original' outlook on my precious Shakespearean plays, but I was delighted and enthralled in this production that was performed well and courteously traditional in virtue.

Taming Of The Shrew, considered a great controversy today for its seemingly anti-feminist thoughts is a compelling fairytale story of how tyrannical Katherine found love. Simply put, demure Bianca, younger sister to Katherine, is coveted by many suitors and as old law states, no man can wed the younger until the elder is married first. The only hitch is that Katherine is bolshy, angry, ill-tempered, and far too witty. Two decrepit suitors bent on Bianca's hand plot together to remove Kate from the equation by marrying her off. Petruchio is house rich, but money poor and is looking for a rich wife to marry away his problems. The match is harmonious, except that no man in his right mind would want Kate. Petruchio seems desperate enough to take the challenge, and what ensues is a powerful battle of wits.

I am inclined to believe that the dramatic end scene where Petruchio bets that his wife will come to him when beckoned is not a feminist lash back in current context, but an intricate analysis of what it means to be married. Both men and women have forgot that marriage is a delicate dance that two people, when done well, can perform beautifully. Much of that dance is established by roles, however you define them. Hinton's directing touch doesn't concede in this idea at the end; we are allowed no present day feminist declarations in the performance that would make Taming of The Shrew an easily digestible play about the battle of the sexes. 

Irene Poole's conviction, as Kate, throughout Shrew and particularly at the final scene is riveting. Poole means every word she says in Shrew, to complete resonance, which makes the audience mull over those words long after they have been spoken. Evan Buliung, who is Petruchio in Shrew and Mercutio in this season's Romeo and Juliet walks that fine balance beam of being both repugnant and intensely magnetic. Like Kate, the audience doesn't know whether to revile Petruchio or swoon over him. Buliung makes Petruchio even more enticing then originally thought imaginable. Of course, a nod to Lucy Peacock, who transforms the typically male character of Grumio, is simply venerable in all she does.

The set was delightful as a huge backdrop of Queen Elizabeth anchored the stage much of the time, and when the set was reshaped to Petruchio's residence, a stunning two-tiered wooden-framed house was pushed forward. The costumes were equally enthralling and deliberately in keeping with the time in which the play is set. Two costumes in particular stood out as Kate and Petruchio are dressed in similar but different royal red outfits, showing their synchronicity and differences all at once.

The audience was relaxed and delighted in the twists and turns the play took. Peter Hinton's Taming of The Shrew is both saucy and formidable!