The play, The Taming of the Shrew, is being performed from Thursday, March 14, to Saturday, March 16, in the auditorium. Tickets cost $6 for students and $8 for adults. The Taming of the Shrew is a comedic play-within-a-play. Christopher Sly (Ben Wirzba) drunkenly runs into the auditorium during Taylor’s opening speech. Maggie Cummings and Molly Burke, the assistant director and assistant stage manager, chase him on stage. They yell that he needs to pay for his ticket and walk away, then he makes a joke about a baseball hitting him in the head and collapses. The audience realizes that this is part of the play when the ensemble cast members come on stage and interact with Christopher. A lord (Sarah Leverette) decides to trick Christopher into thinking he’s a lord. She gets her men to dress him in fancy clothes and tell him he went insane fifteen years ago, forgetting his true upbringing.
Christopher accepts the idea that he’s a lord and meets his wife (Quinlan Blackmon). His wife is actually a boy wearing a dress. Blackmon is hilarious in his role, and he was my favorite character in the introduction. The men pretending to serve Christopher put on a play for him about two daughters, Katherine and Bianca.The play-within-a-play is where most of the story takes place. Katherine (Abby Peel) is a bratty, selfish woman who doesn’t want to wed anyone. Bianca (Morgan McCallum), her sister, is a kind, gentle woman who has many suitors. Their father, Baptista (Magaly Asuncion), will not let Bianca marry until Katherine has married. This creates a problem for her suitors, and when Lucentio (Jay Huskins), a student arriving in town to take classes at a local university, becomes infatuated with Bianca, this complicates matters even further. Lucentio, Hortensio (Nicky Vassello), and Gremio (Will Adams) all try to win the affections of Bianca. Petruchio (Luke Taylor) decides to “tame” Katherine and marries her.
Peel is amazing as Katherine. She’s the loudest person in the cast, and she plays Katherine as a rude and insensitive character. As Katherine changes over the course of the play, Peel gradually makes Katherine become more likeable. Katherine was my favorite character and I thought Peel was a perfect fit for her role.
Grumio (Anastasia Zitko) entertains audience members with physical comedy and side-splitting one-liners. Grumio is Petruchio’s servant, and he often interrupts scenes by dropping a metal basket onto the stage. He also smashes a pie into his face once and eats large quantities of food.
The play’s set is “one of our most ambitious sets to date,” according to Jared Taylor. The effort the crew put into the set shows. There is
a ramp in front of the stage and a set of stairs leads to a high platform on stage left. Taylor projected images of fields and hills on to the cyclorama behind the stage, which complements the set nicely.
There were a few noticeable mistakes in the play. A few actors repeatedly forgot their lines, creating awkward silences that other actorshad to fill. The mics glitched at least ten times, and audience members heard loud crackling noises come through the speakers. A couple of people spoke quietly and didn’t have mics, so their lines were hard to hear. Otherwise, the acting was spot on and the play was almost flawless.
Cast members and people in the audience thought Thursday’s show was great. Alia Riley, a sophomore who watched the play, called it “absolutely hilarious.” Luke Taylor thought it was “awesome,” and Jared Taylor said it went “well. [There was] plenty of laughter.” Lauren Asbury, who plays Vincentio, called the night’s performance “phenomenal.” Vassello stated that he hopes “the rest of the nights go as smoothly as [Thursday night’s show].”
I loved The Taming of the Shrew. I’d recommend that anyone who has a free night Friday or Saturday see this play. It is Shakespeare, but that doesn’t mean that it’s confusing or boring. This cast proves that Shakespeare can be exactly the opposite- clear and fun.
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