Circle Players presents this Shakespeare comedy, with a gender-bending twist.
By: Stuart Duncan
It was just a few years ago the Circle Players staged its first Shakespeare play, and worried lest the audience at its intimate Playhouse on Victoria Avenue in Piscataway might shun such classic material. To everyone’s surprise and delight, Shakespearean comedies have been hugely successful and the latest in the series, The Taming of the Shrew, has just opened for a three-week run. It is a joy.
Director Rob Pherson set the story in the 1890s, played a gender-bender game with one of the principal characters and allowed his talented company considerable leeway to take liberties with Elizabethan mores and in the process found both humor and understanding. The work was first printed in the first folio (in 1623), but apparently had been taken from an anonymous 1594 comedy first presented by the servants of the Earl of Pembroke.
The plot is simple: The "shrew" is Katharina, a maiden of such violent whims and tempers that it seems unlikely she will ever find a husband. Her father, Baptista, refuses to allow her lovable younger sister, Bianca, to marry one of her numerous suitors until Katharina is off his hands. Finally Petruchio appears, marries Katharina in short order and, by his own abrupt highhandedness, "tames" her to such good effect that he wins a bet with two other men on a test of their wives’ obedience. According to the script, the entire play is enacted for the benefit of Christopher Sly, a drunken tinker.
But director Pherson has cut Sly and the entire prologue section from the evening and hence streamlined the production nicely. He also has turned "father" Baptista into a "mother" (albeit a cigar-smoking mom) and then turned the story over to a splendid cast. Paul Salvatoriello romps through the role of Petruchio, always seeming about to break into "I’ve Come To Wive It Wealthily in Padua." Patti Murtha has the voice and demeanor for a stunning Katharina and therefore matches him barb for barb. Jennifer Wewers-Sharp is a delicious Bianca, with Al Contursi, Jon Heron and Greg DePetro as her suitors. Catherine Rowe plays Baptista as if she chewed cigars after every meal. Director Pherson himself fills in a number of small cameo roles and hits paydirt as Nathaniel, stealing one scene.
The Victorian costuming credit Piper Miley, Jeanne Woerner and Caron-Lee Sweeney is outstanding. And the Playhouse’s configuration (really theater in a rectangle) works particularly well with the classics, especially when the director and the cast know exactly what they are doing. There are lots of good Shakespeare comedies left.
The Taming of the Shrew continues at Circle Playhouse, 416 Victoria Ave., Piscataway, through Nov. 20. Performances: Fri.-Sat. 8 p.m., Sun. 3 p.m. Tickets cost $12-$15, $11-$14 seniors/students. For information, call (732) 968-7555. On the Web: www.circleplayers.com

