The Taming of the Shrew
2017: Barry Avrich

This is a playful production of the play from the Stratford Festival in Canada. It features Ben Carlson (who played Feste in the festival’s weird but wildly entertaining Twelfth Night) as Petruchio, and his real-life wife Deborah Hay as Katherina.

Like the other Stratford version I have viewed, it retains the Induction, which changes the context (and arguably the meaning) of the play considerably. The Induction is considerably altered in text, such that the drunken interloper (who retains the name Christopher Sly) represents himself as a theatrical blogger. It probably need not be mentioned that blogs were not part of the Elizabethan landscape.

The central portion of the play is presented fairly conventionally, without excessive cutting (there is some) and without any arch interpretive spin meant to hijack the original sense. Carlson and Hay, unsurprisingly, have exceptional chemistry, and the transformation of Katherina into the dutiful wife is a journey and a transformation that is more plausible than one finds in most other versions of the play.

Those who find the play unacceptable for its politically incorrect views (especially in Katherina's final speech) will doubtless resent the fact that the ending is played without any overt irony; omitting the sly wink (or more) is more the exception than the rule these days. In the process, however, the viewer can come to appreciate what the play has to offer on its own terms. Overall, I think this is a very good version of the play to take as a baseline or a comparandum for others.

Buy the play through Prime Video at Amazon.