Steven Leigh Morris – Stage Raw
That David Melville should bring La Dolce Vita into his family-friendly outdoor staging of Shakespeare’s knotty Italian comedy makes sense. Italian comedies of the 1960s are no less dodgy, regarding their sexual politics, than the amused brutality towards a defiant spouse found in Taming of the Shrew’s central story. Independent-minded, embittered Katherine (Melissa Chalsma) turns obedient only after being violently, jocularly wooed by her flippant suitor/husband Petruchio (Luis Galindo). This is every tyrant’s fantasy. Read more…
Deborah Klugman – LA Weekly
How does — or should — a modern director deal with the egregious chauvinism in The Taming of the Shrew? While there are ways, you won’t uncover them in director David Melville‘s current staging, on display weekends in Griffith Park. Read more…
Margaret Gray – LA Times
Sometimes I wish Shakespeare had written a different version of “The Taming of the Shrew” — one in which the shrew is “tamed” with, say, empathy and affection instead of torture.
These anachronistic fantasies flared up at the Independent Shakespeare Co.’s playful Griffith Park production last weekend. Every time Petruchio (Luis Galindo) discussed his plan to deprive Kate (ISC artistic director Melissa Chalsma) of food and sleep, the younger members of my party would look up from their snack-heaped picnic blanket and hiss, “But why?” Read more…
Now playing through August 29.