Shrew

In an age of raised feminist consciousness, The Taming of the Shrew, with its brazen display of male chauvinism and demeaning spectacle of female submissiveness, poses problems both for those staging and those watching the play. Yet when theaters poll audiences on their favorite Shakespeare plays, The Taming of the Shrew is always at or near the top of the list. While the work's appeal probably has something to do with the popularity of both the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton movie version and the Cole Porter musical Kiss Me, Kate, it also can be attributed to the play's large capacity to entertain.

As you take your seat for the antic Taming of the Shrew that Dennis Razze has unleashed on the main stage of the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, watch out for the clowns. They're dashing down the aisles and scaling the walls of Thomas F. Donahue's Italianate set, exchanging imprecations that seem to consist primarily of the names of pasta. They're clambering over early arrivals and summoning hapless patrons on stage for a bit of juggling. They're turning somersaults and knocking each other about.

Morgan Freeman is a gift of the gods. Tracey Ullman is a gift of the Fox network. They do not belong together in anything, but there they are, doing Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in Central Park's open-air Delacorte Theater. It only goes to show that some dumb ideas are smart and that a frivolous notion sometimes pays off. Nothing else in this lively, funny production is serious either. Free Shakespeare mounted by Joseph Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival is an institution in Manhattan.

The Shrew is an adaptation of The Taming of the Shrew that departs so radically from Shakespeare's work that its creators have renamed it. Still, the play's structure and dialogue are unmistakably those of the original. Thus it no doubt will displease not only those who are fond of The Taming of the Shrew, but those who believe an adaptation owes a decent measure of respect to the playwright's script and intentions. The Shrew was adapted, and is directed in a Temple University Theater production, by Marc Milbauer and David Becker, who met a few years ago at the Yale School of Drama.

William Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew is a comedy whose political moment is past. Its theme, that women of spunk and independent spirit need to be manipulated into submitting to their husbands' wills, does not play well with contemporary audiences, despite the notoriety of the new self-help book The Surrendered Wife. John Cranko's ballet derived from the play was given its first performance by the Pennsylvania Ballet Friday evening at the Academy of Music. While the ballet is new to the company, it isn't to the city: Cranko's own Stuttgart Ballet premiered The Taming of the Shrew in March 1969 and brought it to New York and Philadelphia that fall.

On the "Tracey Ullman Show," the leading lady was a true zany. Matter of fact, she was several true zanies, each one looking - and sounding - different. Looking at that leading lady in her dressing room under the tiers of seats in the Delacorte Theater in Central Park, one would never think they were the same person. There she stands, tall and thin, straight dark brown hair with bangs covering her forehead, dressed in a black mini, fussing with an electric kettle. "I need my tea," she says.

The setting of The Taming of the Shrew at the Delaware Theatre Company is the bleak, dimly lighted interior of a large, bare wooden building, and the first thing heard is a recording of "Begin the Beguine. " A program note tells us the location is a USO hall on Adak Island in the Aleutian Islands and the year is 1944. Yes, this is the same play Shakespeare set in 16th-century Padua, and this production does get there, sort of, but first the audience must indulge director Fontaine Syer her imaginative, if not particularly successful, framing device.

What are we to make of four - count 'em, four - current productions of Shakespeare's vexing comedy, The Taming of the Shrew? The play, advocating as it does female subservience, is always tricky. And what are we to make of Lantern Theater Co.'s decision to cast all the roles with male actors? In "original practices" productions of Shakespeare, where young men play the female roles as they did in Renaissance theater, the effect is to create an impeccable illusion of femininity, not to create a drag show.

"No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en," counsels the cheeky servant Tranio early in The Taming of the Shrew, and the fledgling Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival has ta'en the advice firmly to heart. The production of Shakespeare's early comedy that begins the festival's inaugural season is a brisk, good-humored reading that milks the script for every bit of pleasure it can find. It's a promising debut. Mindful that many in his audience at Allentown College may be encountering Shakespeare for the first time, the Rev. Gerard J. Schubert directs the play with a disarming straightforwardness that, for the most part, condescends to neither audience nor text.

Petruchio's wife just doesn't back down in this modern-day interpretation of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, which will open tomorrow evening in Hatboro. Presented by the Village Players of Hatboro, the comedy is intended to come off as an irreverent, bawdy look at the battle of the sexes. "Everything says traditional - the costumes, the set - and then they open their mouths," said director Anna Marie D'Addarie of Willow Grove. "The speech is the same, but the interpretation of the lines are more '90s.

DEAR ABBY : There's a venomous old woman who roams our neighborhood looking for victims to embarrass, humiliate or annoy. She told a neighbor's 11-year-old granddaughter she looked like a slut because she was wearing shorts currently in fashion for the young. A new neighbor thought she should be treated with a little kindness. She had her opportunity recently when we were at a restaurant. The harridan sat alone, and my friend commented to her on the beautiful day. Her response? "Don't waste my time with meaningless inanities!"

Chocolates molder. Roses wilt. Neckties have an unfortunate similarity to nooses. But a love DVD isn?t perishable. And it has two distinct advantages over most prezzies. Lover and beloved can enjoy it together. And it is a gift that keeps on giving. But which title? Suggestions for some quality Valen-time: Clueless (1995): While making over and fixing up her friends, Alicia Silverstone is surprised by her feelings for an unlikely guy. Ever After (1998)

You may not immediately place the names of Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith, but the screenwriters are the Shakespeares of American movie comedy. They achieved this status in part by updating the Bard in 10 Things I Hate About You (a sprightly rethink of Taming of the Shrew ) and She's the Man ( Twelfth Night ). In between they wrote an original, Legally Blonde , an effervescent social satire tweaking mean girls and social-climbing boys, exalting tiny dogs and underdogs.

Just what can you do with The Taming of the Shrew? Well, you can dress it up with all sorts of noble notions, claiming that it's a product of Shakespeare's time, when wifely scolds were frequent stage characters. You can insist that Kate - "the fiend of hell" is what she's called in the play's first minutes - isn't really beaten into submission by her suitor, Petruchio; he's merely playful in his quest to make her an independent woman with a deep inner karma. (A lot of scholars and less-invested folks have said such stuff.

What are we to make of four - count 'em, four - current productions of Shakespeare's vexing comedy, The Taming of the Shrew? The play, advocating as it does female subservience, is always tricky. And what are we to make of Lantern Theater Co.'s decision to cast all the roles with male actors? In "original practices" productions of Shakespeare, where young men play the female roles as they did in Renaissance theater, the effect is to create an impeccable illusion of femininity, not to create a drag show.

Leave it to director Domenick Scudera to set Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival's production of The Taming of the Shrew in the era of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate, a musical that itself referenced the Bard's take on love and marriage. Scudera was wise to set this particular work in a pre-feminist world of pennant-waving college boys and wealthy old men sporting monocles and bowler hats. There's a certain squirm factor involved in watching Petruchio torture his new bride into submission that seems, at the very least, less anachronistic here.

The Last Kiss is a meditation on marriage for the Gen-X set, and for the Gen-Y set, too (as in, Why? Why? Why?). Dotted with wistful tuneage by Coldplay, Snow Patrol and Aimee Mann, it's a movie - based on an Italian art house hit of a few years back - that grapples with the thorny issues of commitment, fidelity and family, and tossing it all for a wild night with a college hottie. Zach Braff stars as Michael, a young architect who lives with, and is about to have a baby with, his girlfriend, Jenna (Jacinda Barrett)

Just a few days before choreographer John Cranko's death in June 1973, I first saw two of his ballets at the Academy of Music. He had for many years directed the Stuttgart Ballet, and their tours from that era are still cherished memories for many dance fans. My sister and I had tickets to his Swan Lake and Romeo and Juliet. We arrived cocktail-mellowed and late on the first night and were shushed when, in confusion over our tickets, we wondered aloud, "Where are the swans?" Our programs told us we were not at Swan Lake, but at Romeo and Juliet.

Adapting Shakespeare's comedy "The Taming of the Shrew" into dance, with infinite opportunities for hilarious clashes in the battle of the sexes, inspired choreographer John Cranko's vivid imagination for physical humor. It's a challenging work, but the Pennsylvania Ballet has enough depth of talent to provide three different casts of lead characters in its production, which opens tonight. Rehearsals for this romp were commandeered by Jane Bourne, the official "choreologist and repetiteur for the Cranko estate," which means she's responsible for translating Cranko's choreography into the body language of each company that performs his work.

The setting of The Taming of the Shrew at the Delaware Theatre Company is the bleak, dimly lighted interior of a large, bare wooden building, and the first thing heard is a recording of "Begin the Beguine. " A program note tells us the location is a USO hall on Adak Island in the Aleutian Islands and the year is 1944. Yes, this is the same play Shakespeare set in 16th-century Padua, and this production does get there, sort of, but first the audience must indulge director Fontaine Syer her imaginative, if not particularly successful, framing device.