Word: bensussen
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While productions of “The Taming of the Shrew” traditionally focus on the play’s portrayal of gender stereotypes and the domestication of women, what intrigues Bensussen about the show is the idea of transformation. In the director’s notes, she writes, “Within the world of ‘Shrew,’ everyone is playing at what they are not, and class, as well as gender, are exposed as performances in which performer and viewer are complicit...
...with all this emphasis on themes of change, the end product somehow seems stagnant throughout most of the evening. Bensussen uses Shakespeare’s lesser-known induction to the play as a sort of meta-theatrical framing device. This prelude to the show drops us into a typical bar atmosphere, complete with pretzels. A drunk stumbles in off the street, and the staff of the Wild Cat decides to play a prank on him, invoking the help of a drunken entourage who are forced to act out a play as punishment for not paying their...
Thus begins the actual story of “Shrew.” Bensussen manipulates this play-within-a-play trope to great success for the majority of the opening scenes. The actors take on their roles with the delightful awkwardness of children in a school play—scripts in hand, direction shouted at them mid-scene, and endearingly over-the-top line readings. Yet as the show progresses, the actors become more comfortable in their roles, and the production shifts from a clever tongue-in-cheek commentary on social performativity into a relatively normal presentation of Shakespeare?...
...show, an odd move that seems to invite the audience to find gender commentaries in a production that claims to preference other themes. But beyond all else, we are left with a relatively plain production of “Shrew” that, despite some charming directorial flourishes from Bensussen, falls flat...
...bravado of the role to perfection, but again, this directorial move seems to invoke the ideas of gender relations in the play above themes of transformation. Beyond that, the casting (which includes eight men and only one woman, playing Kate) seems to play towards the gender themes as well. Bensussen may have been intrigued by Kate’s transformation rather than the conflict of genders, but the production itself certainly does not reflect that...