The Taming of the Shrew gets a lively, commedia dell'arte-style staging in South Florida that delivers lots of laughs. It really isn't much of a stretch: The go-for-the-gags style was big in Italy, where the play takes place, at about the same time Shakespeare was working in England.
At New Theater in Coral Gables, director Roberto Prestgiacomo's adaption of Shakespeare's comedy is a treat to look at and listen to. There are half-face masks for some male characters (will the black-beak nose of Baptista meet up with his white-crescent beard?) and some white-faced women with red-dot cheeks. There's a giant puppet. And on a set that includes a functioning rope ladder and lots of no-frills tables and stools, actors not written into a scene sit on the sides among props to the provide sound effects with the help of cowbell, woodblock and slide whistle.
At the start, there's a nod to Dean Martin, later a sample of Richard III, and that puppet is reminiscent of I Pagliacci. There's some splendid silliness with well-placed sibilance and with a recurring site gag at the mention of Pisa.
It's great fun, even if the play is something of a problem when taken literally. Wealthy Baptista won't let his much-sought-after daughter Bianca marry until his elder, always-in-a-bad-mood daughter, Katharina, weds. Swaggering heir Petruchio arrives in Padua and decides he's the man to tame Katharina. This is accomplished by denying her food and sleep until she's happily obedient.
This is the play that inspired Cole Porter's 1948 musical, Kiss Me, Kate and, 50 years later, the high school-set movie "10 Things I Hate About You ," so it's pretty malleable.
New Theater's version is fueled by Israel Garcia as Petruchio; he plays it, as the Italians might have said, "con brio." Katharina and Bianca don't leave much an impression here, but these Shakespeare characters are pretty much cartoons.
Another quibble: Actors a few times directly address individual audience members, either from the lip of the stage or getting literally in someone's face from the aisle. This can be an awkward diversion or, worse, carry the whiff of desperation, and that's too bad, because it isn't needed.
There's plenty to look at on stage, among them Nicole Quintana's set, with its hangings of muted earth tones and curtains of quiet pastels; and K. Blair Brown's costumes, maybe the best collection of costumes in years for New Theater's annual Shakespeare offering.
And there's the ensemble. In the play's first act, Petruchio makes his entrance on the shoulders of his servant Grumio. When it's all over, the impression lingers that much of the production's success rests on the shoulders of the various groups that function as an ensemble and of Prestgiacomo's handling of them.
