Photos courtesy of Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Top: Bianca Amato and Ian Bedford. Below, Amato (left) and Mary Beth Fisher. Second from bottom: Sean Fortunato, Amato, Erik Hellman and Catherine Cunningham. Bottom: Hellman (from left) , Cunningham and Fortunato.
Of all the times we’ve seen The Taming of the Shrew – and it’s been at least six major productions over the years not to mention several close readings through grad school – not once has the play ever made sense to us. Katharine’s final monologue about how her husband is her lord, king, governor and keeper? It makes sense dramatically only if she finishes with an ironic grimace and by shoving back her sleeves to reveal that she’s slit her wrists and will be dead before the curtain comes down. There is no other way a woman of Katharine’s spirit, intellect and indomitable independence would ever deliver such a load of self-loathing, spineless tripe -unless she’d been lobotomized. Since such procedures did not exist circa Shakespeare, we’re ruling that out.
Now comes Josie Rourke 's take on Shrew, framed by a prologue, entr’acte and a post-final-monologue addendum - additions penned by no other than Neil LaBute. The Barrington playwright, for those just joining in, is the author of such ugly American-man dramas as In the Company of Men, Mercy, Fat Pig and Bash. Had he five vaginas, he would still be deemed King Misogynist by some. Yet thanks to LaBute’s brash tinkering, The Taming of the Shrew finally works. Its woman-are-chattel-and-they-better-like-it message is gone. Better still, the play itself is funnier, richer and far more meaningful. It takes a certain degree of cojones – make that ovaries - to so brazenly mess with The Taming of the Shrew. LaBute has them. With Rourke, he solves the Bard’s infamous problem play. 
There’s something else remarkable about this Shrew: The concept superimposed over Shakespeare’s text actually enhances that text rather than minimizes it. We’d argue that 99.99 percent of the time, when the concept is this heavy, the text suffers. Man of La Mancha set in a modern-day mental hospital, Titus Andronicus set in an all-boys school, Macbeth set in contemporary Chicago – all such conceits tend to be more about the director’s (re)vision than what’s on actually the page. They usually play as if the director didn’t trust that the words were enough. The result is that artifice trumps art and the heart of the play gets obscured by all sorts of fussy superimpositions, juxtapositions and other assorted add-ons .
With Shrew, the concept fits like muscle on bone. As for that concept: This Shrew is staged as a play-within-the-play. The framing device is anchored by the peerless Mary Beth Fisher, as the Director of a Shrew starring her long-time collaborator, lover and partner, (Bianca Amato) as Katharine. 
As it turns out, the Director may have a hidden agenda in her vision for Shakespeare’s comedy. Petruchio (Ian Bedford, a swaggering epitome of sweaty manliness) and the other nobles on stage strut about in 12-inch-sub-sandwich-sized bejeweled codpieces. Erect codpieces. Katharine – who the Director almost never calls by her real name - has to submit to extreme demeaning, even for a Taming of the Shrew production. There is a prolonged close-spot on her panties, Petruchio’s sausage-sized fingers grabbing her buttocks in a feat of physical and mental domination. She’s tossed around like a football during her repartee with Petruchio, her wedding dress ripped to filthy shreds, her hair pulled into tangled rats nests, her face grimed up with mud. And of course through all this humiliation – as Shakespeare’s script demands – Katharine is seen slowly, surely falling in love with the man who has come right out and admitted he considers her his chattel, his goods, his “ass.”
The context of the Director as Star’s Lover throws the whole world of this Shrew into a new perspective. In the manner of Noises Off, the tempestuous relationships off-stage make those onstage suddenly bloom with often hilarious, ironic and insightful subtext. The banter between Kate and Petruchio seems to stand out in HD against LaBute’s framing. The added scenes show in stark, brutally funny relief how theater – like pretty much everywhere - is high school. Gossip runs rampant, cliques form, and levels of self- absorption are off the charts. 
As do directors of many Shrew productions, the Director ramps up the sexual chemistry between Petruchio and Katharine. There’s palpable heat when he buries his tongue in her bodice, and there’s no denying the charge that passes between the two. Yet all the sexual chemistry in the world won’t make a woman forgive a man for starving her, beating her and demanding she submit while proclaiming to the heavens that he’ll break her if he has to withhold food and clothing for months. That is what so many productions of Shrew blithely ignore – the glaringly obvious fact that even a mind-blowing sex can’t atone for a man who throws you under a horse, takes your clothes away and doesn’t let you eat.
LaBute has not ignored that. Nor has Rourke, who gets an uncompromising and white-hot-angry performance from Amato.
If helps that Rourke’s cast is anchored by actors who know their business. Fisher has a way with wry like nobody else around, and it is put to powerful use here. Like Katharine in the play-within-the-play world of Shrew, the Director also gets a monologue. It’s a riff on one of those cheesy curtain speeches wherein the audience is thanked effusively for showing up after being urged to read the inserts in the program. This curtain speech, however, is one of escalating hysteria as The Director slowly, irrevocably loses her sh*t on stage. It’s the one part of the frame that shows it’s hinges - LaBute goes too far over the top – but darned if Fisher doesn’t make it work.
And then there’s that final, glorious sentence by Amato. In less than 10 words, we get a perfect union of Amato’s character as Kate and as the actor playing Kate. And it makes the whole, blessed hitherto misogynistic problem of a play finally come together.
The Taming of the Shrew continues through June 6 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand Ave (Navy Pier). Tickets are $55 - $75. For more information, go to www.chicagoshakes.com or click here
For more reviews of Chicago Shakespeare Theater productions, click here (Richard III), here (Macbeth), here (A Midsummer Night's Dream), here (Private Lives) and here (Amadeus).
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