Word: elizabethean
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Dramatically muddy and dubiously humorous, Taming shares with The Merchant of Venice a modern stigma for its Elizabethean prejudices. If, as some feminists suggest, pornography is anything that shows women in a degrading light, Taming would rank up where with Debbie does Dallas. A large part of the play's humour concerns the attempt of a man to turn his new wife into the slave of his will, not a very funny subjects to the feminists fighting for the positive portrayal of women...
...efficiently evokes the backstage of a rundown vaudeville house, with three large panels of circus-patterned scrim backstage. At several points, backlit actors pantomime the offstage action of the play, alleviating the inevitable boredom of this regrettable Elizabethean convention. But McDonough cannot stop with this modest tactic; he has to include pantomimed metaphor's of the onstage action. Of many egregious examples, the backstage portrayal of a catfight during Bianca's and Katherina's second-act sparring manages to be as insulting as it is cliched...
...playful costumes by Deborah-Lee Moisan highlight the anachronisms of The Frogs, stressing the play's timelessness. Traditional tunics mingle with neon leotards. Shaw appears in a sombre suit, while Will Shakespeare's costume is strictly Elizabethean. Herakles, a vain jock, wears his fabled lion skin with Nikes. These mixed colors and periods set against the bare Fogg courtyard, decorated only with several large moveable blocks, stand out vibrantly, the effect innovative and welcome in an era of elaborate staging. The multilevel courtyard constitutes a director's dream: both the second floor pillared balcony and the third story windows come...
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