Word: shrews
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...Bernard Shaw raved on about the play as a remarkable example of "realistic comedy." What rot! Shrew is about as realistic as Peter Pan, and the work is, of course, pure farce. Now heaven knows that farce depends mainly on situation and incident rather than character. But good farce (like The Merry Wives of Windsor, for instance) concerns itself to some extent at least with character; in Shrew we don't even have the slightest idea why Kate is shrewish...
Maybe this is the reason directors are so drawn to Shrew. They see a special challenge in the task of trying to compensate for the endless deficiencies in the script by hoking it up with all manner of ingenious gimmicks, ploys, and business. But I have never seen a production of Shrew that succeeded in being amusing all the way through, and I never expect...
Having mounted Shrew nine years ago, the American Shakespeare Fetstival has now tried again. Obviously it ran into troubles. The program credits the "original production concept" to Don Driver, who started out as the director. The staging was later taken over by Joseph Anthony. During rehearsals, the production ran through two actors for the main role of Petruchio before settling on John Cunningham (who I'm sure is the best suited of the three...
...brass, xylophone, tambourine and harp--and it sounds somewhat Spanish, curiously. A big wagon rolls into sight and disgorges an itinerant acting troupe, which takes bows before the audience. This could make sense, but Anthony has done away entirely with the Induction scenes, in which Shakespeare makes clear that Shrew is an entertainment within an entertainment...
...Italian name is properly spelled Petruccio, and the Shakespeare Folio made it Petruchio precisely to provide a phonetic spelling for English-speaking actors. Thus it should be pronounced with a ch-sound as in "church." (The identical situation obtains with the name Borachio in Much Ado About Nothing.) Furthermore, Shrew's verse requires, except in three or four lines, that Petruchio be trisyllabic (just as it is in Italian...