The Taming of the Shrew

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There may be no Shakespeare comedy more difficult to stage in the 21st century than The Taming of the Shrew. The play has become a perpetual theatrical litmus test, inviting every generation to determine whether its brutal games of courtship can still produce laughter without sacrificing moral clarity. Some productions attempt to soften Petruchio, others transform Katherine into a knowing conspirator, while still others frame the work as an artifact whose uglier impulses should simply be endured. Karsten Otto’s exuberant new production for Small Boat Productions and kotto Productions, inaugurating Shakespeare CSE’s ambitious Shakespeare Entirely series at La MaMa’s intimate Club Space, wisely chooses another path. Rather than solve Shakespeare’s contradictions, it animates them with such wit, intelligence, and theatrical vitality that the audience is compelled to wrestle with them long after the evening has ended.

The production announces its intentions before a single line of verse is spoken. A fully functioning bar occupies the center of the playing space, inviting patrons to mingle with performers in an atmosphere that feels less like entering a theater than wandering into a neighborhood gathering already in progress. By evening’s end, that conviviality has become the production’s governing metaphor. Shakespeare’s prickly comedy unfolds not as a museum piece but as an event shared among friends, with the audience situated only a few feet from the performers inside La MaMa’s wonderfully unpretentious upstairs venue.

Otto’s greatest act of confidence arrives before the play itself truly begins. While most contemporary productions dispense with the Christopher Sly induction, treating the drunken prankster as expendable theatrical baggage, Shakespeare CSE embraces the playwright’s complete text, honoring the company’s mission of presenting every play without cuts. The decision proves revelatory. The framing device reminds us that The Taming of the Shrew is itself a performance imposed upon an unsuspecting spectator, subtly encouraging us to question every social role that follows. Far from delaying the action, the prologue enriches it, particularly when performed by an ensemble so thoroughly fluent in Shakespeare’s verse and so delightfully attuned to physical comedy.

The familiar plot remains delightfully convoluted. Lucentio falls hopelessly in love with the gentle Bianca, only to discover that her father will not permit her marriage until her older sister Katherine is wed. Enter Petruchio, whose determination to acquire both wife and fortune ignites one of literature’s most combustible romantic pairings. Mistaken identities proliferate, tutors become lovers, servants impersonate masters, and the machinery of Shakespearean farce spins with increasing velocity. Otto stages these comic complications with remarkable clarity, ensuring that even newcomers to the play can follow every disguise, deception, and reversal without sacrificing the exhilarating pace.

The modest scale of the production becomes one of its greatest strengths. Marissa Todd and Mehula Singh’s scenic design transforms the bare brick architecture of the Club space into an endlessly flexible environment through little more than rolling platforms, scattered furniture, and the omnipresent bar. Amara Payton McNeil’s lighting shifts almost imperceptibly from festive warmth to unsettling intimacy, carefully illuminating the moments when Shakespeare’s comedy begins to reveal its darker undercurrents. Olivia Vaughn Hern’s costumes delightfully mingle Renaissance silhouettes with contemporary details—denim patches sharing space with tunics, ruffs, and flowing skirts—while the ensemble’s understated clown makeup evokes the traditions of commedia dell’arte without reducing the characters to cartoons.

At the center of the evening stands Kate Eastman’s magnificent Katherine, a performance of uncommon emotional intelligence. Too often presented as merely abrasive, Eastman discovers a woman whose furious wit springs from years of exclusion and condescension. Her Katherine lashes out because she has long understood the humiliating terms upon which her society values women. Every cutting remark lands with comic precision, yet each also reveals an intellect painfully aware of the trap in which she lives. When her famous final speech arrives, Eastman refuses either cynical irony or sentimental submission. Instead, she delivers it with extraordinary composure, suggesting a woman who has learned to manipulate the language of obedience as deftly as everyone else has manipulated her.

Juan Arturo meets her with an equally layered Petruchio. Swaggering, magnetic, and undeniably dangerous, he never allows the character’s charm to erase the cruelty embedded in his methods. His deprivation of Katherine’s food, clothing, and comfort remains disturbing to watch, yet Arturo also reveals flashes of uncertainty beneath the bravado, hinting that Petruchio himself performs an inherited version of masculinity from which he cannot entirely escape. Their relationship never resolves into romance in any conventional sense. Instead, it becomes an unnerving contest between two brilliant people navigating roles neither fully authored. Their chemistry is electric precisely because it remains unresolved.

Around them, the ensemble supplies an abundance of comic pleasure. McLean Peterson’s buoyant Bianca possesses considerably more spirit than the role is often afforded, while Romeo Torres lends Lucentio an infectious earnestness that makes his elaborate deceptions seem almost innocent. Mario C. Brown is especially superb as the resourceful Tranio, steering the subplot with effortless confidence, while Milena Makse’s swaggering Hortensio, Will Sarratt’s irrepressible Grumio, Uma Paranjpe’s lively Biondello, Langston Darby’s dignified Baptista, Evan Ayer’s witty guarding of Petruchio’s “taming school,” Jennifer Kim’s Gremio as a pitch-perfect counter to Petruchio’s methods, and Shannon Mastel’s delightfully uproarious Sly and wise Vincentio, all embody a magnificent company that create a world that feels simultaneously playful and perilously governed by patriarchal expectation. Otto’s inspired decision to cast women in several traditionally male suitor roles subtly unsettles the play’s assumptions without resorting to heavy-handed reinterpretation, allowing questions of gender performance to emerge naturally from the action itself.

What ultimately distinguishes this production is its refusal to flatten Shakespeare into a contemporary thesis. It neither apologizes for the play’s misogyny nor sensationalizes it. Instead, Otto trusts that audiences are capable of holding competing truths in their minds simultaneously: that The Taming of the Shrew is uproariously funny, dramatically exhilarating, and profoundly unsettling. In embracing the play’s ambiguities rather than escaping them, Shakespeare CSE has launched its Shakespeare Entirely series with a production that is not only intellectually invigorating but also enormously entertaining—a reminder that the greatest classics endure not because they provide easy answers, but because they continue asking impossibly difficult questions with inexhaustible theatrical delight.

The Taming of the Shrew (through August 2, 2026)

Small Boat Productions and kotto Productions

Shakespeare CSE

The Club at La MaMa, 74A East 4th Street, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit www.eventbrite.com

Running time: two hours and 45 minutes including one intermission