By Robert E. Knoll
Department of English
The new production of
"The Taming of the Shrew,"
which was added to the
Repertory Theatre this
weekend, is a director's show.
Through clever staging and
elablorate action only
obliquely hinted at in
Shakespeare's text, Tice Miller
has illuminated the old play.
The central conception is fresh,
helpful, and fun.
"Shrew" is, of course, farce
- but farce with a
Shakespearean difference. This
is the story of the bright young
man who marries a beautiful
shrew for her money at least
so he says and then proceeds
to "tame" her - that is, to
cure her of her unhappy habit
of mind. The fun is in the step
by step method which
Petruchio, very well played by
Carl Beck, inflicts on Kate,
played by the talented Susan
Baer. (Susan Baer has
possibilities of becoming a
considerable actress; she needs
an extended professional
apprenticeship.)
Romping cure
The cure calls for all kinds
of romping on the stage. When
we first meet Kate the cursed,
she comes dragging her coy
sister Bianca, played by the
appropriately pretty Stephanie
Black. Kate roughs her up a
bit. When a scene or two later
Petruchio meets Kate, they
engage in a kind of courtship
dance in which words,
frequently elaborate, are
matched against action which
is coarse. The result is one of
the funniest scenes in the play.
Our pleasure in the whole
thing comes from two sources.
First, we see that the
relationship between Petruchio
and Kate is an eternally
recurring one. A spirited wife
requires a spirited husband, for
the happiness of both.
Kate is miserable when she
is selfishly asserting her own
will; and she is paradoxically
happy when she is mastered by
a loving husband. Similar
situations are not unknown
offstage! Second, the play
raises questions about what a
shrew actually is. Is Kate, who
acts what she feels, more or
less a shrew than her flirtatious
sister, who hypocritically
maneuvers her suitors? The
audience must choose Kate.
Play within a play
In this production Tice
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Miller has placed this central
action within a dramatic frame,
a brief introductory story of
Christopher Sly who, in his
drunken stupor, is presented
with a play by a troop of
travelling actors. The story of
the taming of the shrew is thus
a play within a play, an
exempium, a Sunday School
story with a funny moral.
Miller provides an epilogue
scene borrowed from another
Elizabethan play which points
it up: for everybody's
happiness shrews must be
tamed by their husbands'
strong hands. One is pleased to
see the Sly story thus
expanded. It adds a significant
dimension to the central
situation.
The play within the play is
Continued page 7.
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tuesday, august 7, 1973
summer nebraskan
page 5