Exhibitionism

The Taming of the Shrew

If looks could kill, then Petruchio would be a stone stiff, total toast, history. The withering glare directed his way by the force of nature named Kate is such that it could stop his heart, melt him into a quivering blob, and slice and dice the remains with the daggers shot from her eyes. But since those orbs haven’t the power to render this annoying would-be suitor inert, she’ll resort to the tools with which she has terrorized her sister Bianca and Bianca’s suitors and pretty much everyone else in Padua: her feet, her fists, and anything she can throw.

Watching Petruchio attempt to wrangle this Kate in Ballet Austin’s The Taming of the Shrew was like watching a reckless mouse try to put a bell around the neck of a wildcat — a fool’s errand but a damned entertaining one. Choreographer Stephen Mills packed his adaptation of Shakespeare’s comedy with a rollicking physicality that spun ballet into slapstick and twirled slapstick into ballet. Kate diving into the outstretched arms of Bianca’s three suitors and bowling them down took the traditional image of the graceful ballerina and tweaked it with a raucously subversive gag, and yet the blatantly comic moves, from the run at the men to the launch into air to the men’s pratfall, were executed with such fluidity that they achieved elegance and beauty. The same thing that made you laugh out loud could make you sigh in admiration.

The laughter, however, always came first. Mills’ comic intent was evident from the outset, when a corps of men and women danced on wearing the ski-nose masks of commedia performers — a stage of Punch and Judy pairs whose romantic relationships took such forms as seesawing on their bellies and flipping each other through the air. And Mills merrily built on that, developing comic bits out of language made literal — Bianca’s three suitors falling over themselves for the object of their affections — and set-pieces such as Kate left standing at the altar — more glaring eyes at the guests who dare to doze off or chitchat behind her bridal veil — and false starts down the aisle after her groom finally arrives — on a bicycle.

Still, as endlessly ingenious and impressive as Mills’ physical comedy was — and he kept the schtick flowing and flying through three full acts — what was equally impressive, not to mention equally funny, was his grasp of Shakespeare’s characters and the skill with which his cast communicated their personalities and shared their stories. Gina Patterson gave her Bianca the vivaciousness of the most popular girl in class; you could see why those three guys — Eric Midgley, Frank Shott, and Tony Casati, all amusingly moonstruck — wanted to take her to the prom. Jim Stein’s Petruchio boasted the smug smile and swagger of the dude who believes himself to be God’s gift to women, though he tempered it with enough wit to stay a step ahead of Kate. And, ah, Kate — Allisyn Paino clearly nailed the character’s famously fearsome temper, not only with those flashing eyes (the drop-dead glare reading all the way to the back of Bass) but with a stormy stomp and wicked right cross, but she also captured something tender in the woman that made her sea change in the story credible and lovely: a loneliness hard to see beneath the anger. In a dream sequence wherein we see Petruchio having worn Kate down and she finally has a willing pas de deux with him, Paino made it seem as if Kate has never danced with anyone before. It was a revelation that allowed us to see Kate, not as a “shrew” in need of “taming” but as a human being whose folly had taken over her life and who, on recognizing that, made a change.

With their fourth ballet based on the Bard’s work, Stephen Mills and Ballet Austin have danced the line between our folly and our wisdom, between the pratfall and the pirouette. Shakespeare would be proud.

This article appears in Tom ‘Leatherface’ Delay.