Word: shrewed
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Doyle, 33, a robust blond from Huntington Beach, Calif., was reared by battling parents who taught her that marriage should be an equal partnership. But the writer, who bills herself in her biography as "a feminist and former shrew," says she nearly ruined her marriage to husband John, 44, by becoming a control freak, constantly nagging and demeaning him. Doyle says she turned to happier friends for advice. One told her she never criticized her husband; another said she gave hers control of the money. From there, and aided by ideas in other self-help books, Doyle formulated the concept...
...performance itself is strongest when it is most experimental; Shrew tends to stumble when it gets further away from innovation. The opening scene has Bianca (Meg Weathers '04) physically tied to a chair by her elder sister Kate (Sarah Porter, '03), making the power struggle both highly visual and immediate. The intensity of the moment, however, quickly finds itself with nowhere to go, and much of the energy dissipates as the dialogue of the scene progresses. In a variety of roles, among them Baptista, the girls' father, Jack Riccobono '03 shifts between several partially successful attempts at development-difficult enough...
...most solid performance of the show comes from Ben Margo '04 in a turn as Petruchio, perhaps Shakespeares least likable comic character. Margo's relentless, efficient, emotionless portrait of the man who must break Kate's independent spirit focuses more upon the social necessity of curbing the Shrew's temperament and less upon the subsequent sexual conquest of her unwilling body. While this occasionally stands in contrast with the other themes brought out in the production, it is also one of its most successful elements...
Director Jarcho wanted Shrew to be painful to watch in a good way; though generally evocative, this production tends to show the audience its edge without actually cutting anyone with it. If anything even vaguely experimental ever happened in the Loeb Experimental Theatre, then Shrew might have had a home. As is, this production is both a remarkable exercise of an under-utilized alternative theatrical space and an effective revisitation of a powerful and poignant comedy...
...SHREW...