THEATER REVIEW; ‘Taming of the Shrew’

What’s to be done with the Utah Shakespearean Festival’s Shakespeare-in-the-Schools program? Year after year, the touring troupe from Cedar City invades high schools in four states with 75-minute slapstick routines that try to pass for culture.
This year it’s “The Taming of the Shrew.” Teenagers, the thinking seems to go, are far too dumb to appreciate the real Bard, so the show is set in the Wild, Wild West. It’s Annie Oakley talking funny. People fall down a lot, men jump in fright into each other’s arms, and guys sing goofy versions of “Home on the Range.”
“Shrew” is one Shakespeare’s easiest to understand plays. Beautiful younger daughter Bianca (Kristen Henley) can’t get married till her ill-tempered older sister Katharina (Katrina Kuntz) finds a man. It ain’t going to be easy. But along comes scheming bounty hunter Petruchio (Benjamin Brinton) who vows to win the woman for her purse.
What makes this show such a downer isn’t that it’s set in the Wild West. It’s that it isn’t really set at all. It has no foundation. We can’t follow the progression of the main lovers’ relationship because they’re not people. They’re cardboard cutouts of a conception. The other characters provide broad smirks and weird walks to try to choke laughs out of the audience.
The acting is of college-level competence, which is to say enjoyable but nothing that isn’t available at most community theaters.
The kids hollered and hooted every time someone kissed or fell down, but I didn’t sense they were getting involved with the words. What’s to gain by teaching students Shakespeare was a Fox network sitcom?

What: “The Taming of the Shrew”
When: 8 p.m. Friday; 2 p.m. Saturday
Where: Nicholas J. Horn Theatre, College of Southern Nevada, 3200 E. Cheyenne Ave., North Las Vegas
Tickets: $10-$12
Grade: F