Civic's Too-Tame 'Shrew'

CIVIC'S TOO-TAME 'SHREW'

Sexism less of a problem than Shakespeare comedy itself

By CHRISTOPHER POTTER

NEWS ARTS WRITER_______

Call it a cover-up.

It seems theater companies who revive Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” will go to any lengths to camouflage the comedy’s Elizabethan-era male chauvinism: settling the show among modem Mafiosi or motorcycle punks, adding Broadway ballads or hot-air balloons.

Director Tim Morley’s current Ann Arbor Civic Theatre production is possibly the least gimmicky rendering of “Shrew” I’ve ever seen. The only liberty this show takes is to expand Shakespeare himself by including the play’s rarely-staged prologue involving a drunkard named Christopher Sly, for whom “Shrew” is in fact performed as a play within a play.

Sly (played by Scott McCloskey) watches “Shrew” from an actual seat in the audience; he slumbers through the initial scenes, then gets so worked up by Act II that he demands the actors change a scene so a character won’t be sent to jail. Merrily inebriated, he even mingles in the lobby during intermission.

Sly’s distancing presence helps soften the play’s more strident piggish moments and emphasizes that the cast is merely (a la Cole Porter) a troupe of strolling players. Yet Morley’s decision to play “Shrew” as Shakespeare intended reveals a better reason for adding extracurricular folderol: Played straight, this play is BOOORRING.

Performed on a virtually bare stage, Civic’s “Shrew” is entirely dependent on its cast, director and playwright. And I fear this is one 400-year-old comedy that simply isn’t funny anymore, and it’s not only the Bard’s sexism that’s at fault.

Sadly, whenever the focus isn’t on wealthy-wife-seeker Petruchio (Glenn Bugala) and reluctant bride Katharine (Kandy Harris-Dowds), “Shrew” is a grind. Its subplot of triple-suitor rivalry for Kate’s sister Bianca (Natalie Holbrook) is a grueling duel of words, connivances and fake identities that deservedly failed to draw a single laugh at last night’s opening.

Certainly Morley’s cast could be zestier on the whole. Not so Bugala, who lends Petruchio not only a lordly gusto but also lets us see how nimble and clever this basic-good-guy fortune hunter is. Yet Harris-Dowds’ Katharine never seems a match for her determined suitor because she almost never seems sufficiently shrewish.

Ironically, this gorgeous actress gives an engrossing performance: I laughed out loud at her pleased smirk when Petruchio commands “I will bring thee to your bridal chamber!” Yet her Kate seems more a prize than a terror, more righteous than quarrelsome in her outbursts of wrath. Indeed, sis Bianca - conceived by Morley as less than sweet - seems far more nasty and devious, turning on a dazzling smile for a rich suitor, then turning it off just as swiftly when he’s gone.

The whole production has a sluggish feel to it, despite the reappearance of such long-missing Civic regulars as Fred Bock and Chris Korow. With “Shrew” fidelity does not appear to be a virtue, and I’m not talking political correctness. I’m talking about sending in the clowns, motorcycles, balloons, gunmen -anything to get this white-elephant play off its backside.

"The Taming of the Shrew" continues Wednesdays-Saturdays through July 26 26 at Ann Arbor Civic's Play-House, 2275 Platt Road. Curtain for all shows is 8 p.m. Tickets are $16. For details call 971-0605.