Review: Shakespeare Brushes Up His Friedan in Phyllida Lloyd's THE TAMING OF THE SHREW

While the rambunctiously turbulent coupling of gold-digger Petruchio and his violently strong-willed bride Katherina takes center stage in Shakespeare's THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, it's often forgotten that The Bard introduces the plot as a diversion performed by an acting troupe for the drunken, penniless tinker Christopher Sly. This play-within-a-play setup calls into question exactly how serious the playwright was about promoting obedience as the most desirable characteristic in a woman.

But Sly and his cohorts are chucked out of the picture for director Phyllida Lloyd's freestyle riff on THE TAMING OF THE SHREW, a sly-humored feminist rebellion whose only male presence is a recorded voice imitating a very prominent contemporary political figure. Though far from penniless, the opinions expressed by this person have caused some to question his sobriety.

He also has a past association with beauty pageants, and Lloyd opens her Delacorte Theater festivities with the whole company partaking in this year's Miss Lombardy Pageant, held on set designer Mark Thompson's rendering of a faded old carnival ground.

The conceit is a good excuse to have the very funny Donna Lynne Champlin break out her tap shoes for the talent competition, her character's eager-to-please smile trying to add flashiness to a basic routine. But the gal who grabs all the male attention is Gayle Rainkin's Bianca, a Barbie cowgirl who makes a grand entrance at the expense of her older sister Katherina, played with a wonderfully seething grimace by Cush Jumbo.

When Champlin changes out of her taps and dons a baggy suit, she becomes Hortensio, played as a cigar-chomping old-school Broadway type, minus the stogie. He and Gremio (a hardnosed Judy Gold) are both suitors for the hand of Bianca, whose father, Baptista (Latanya Richardson Jackson), won't allow her to marry until Kate is wed.

Along comes Janet McTeer as a wiry redneck punk Petruchio, looking to make a fast buck off a bride's dowry. Kate's resistance to his method of kindness-as-abuse is usually played as broad physical comedy, but while Jumbo reacts to being bartered for with a roar, McTeer's reaction is a low-key sneer. The fact that this vulgar, sleazy and mannerless Petruchio can be seen as a suitable match for an intelligent, independent Katherina, whose only perceived flaw is an objection to being objectified, makes this more a play about privilege than just a knockabout battle of the sexes.

Lloyd trims the play to an intermissionless two hours, punctuated with fun off-beat moments. There's an onstage Winnebago that serves as Petruchio's home. Gold, a popular stand-up comic, ditches her character's big monologue to do a quick set complaining about women taking charge and Jumbo's creepily sincere presentation of Kate's final speech leads into a celebratory rave set to Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation."

Perhaps the faded carnival setting is more representative of the production's style than of its dramaturgy. Here, THE TAMING OF THE SHREW serves as the carnival midway for an entertaining assortment of attractions revolting against the patriarchy, suggesting that Shakespeare ought to brush up his Betty Friedan.

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