‘Taming of the Shrew’ inspires students, alumni to spend summer with the Bard

Summer can be a long, dry season for theater lovers. Director John Muller is helping them stay engaged during the dog days with Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew,” and he’s getting Caesar Rodney students and alumni to help him.

The fact that Muller is doing Shakespeare this summer is a direct result of requests not from the community, but from students. The drama club has stopped doing an annual Shakespeare production during the school year. So when considering what, if anything, to do this summer, Muller took students’ suggestions of Shakespeare and settled on “The Taming of the Shrew.”

“It’s summertime, I wanted to stay away from the heavy ‘Hamlet,’ ‘To be or not to be,” Muller said.

Muller’s version of “Shrew” doesn’t adhere strictly to the classic comedy.

“We have a lot of freedom to mix things up and change things around, so we did,” he said.

That means actors will be speaking the Shakespearean dialogue but the play will be set in modern times. Muller also tweaked the start of “Shrew,” which sets it up as a play within a play. The upcoming version strays from that with original, modern-day dialog at the beginning and end of the show.
The production opens on Kate and Peter in theater box seats, ready to take in a performance. Once the play starts the couple is watching a very familiar story, the one of Katherine and Petruchio and their bickering-as-flirting ways.

The play centers around the much-coveted Bianca, a beautiful and tame daughter of Baptista Minola, and her strong-willed, older sister Katherine. Unfortunately for Bianca’s suitors, her father has decreed that she will not marry until Katherine does. One of Bianca’s suitors, Hortensio, invites his friend Petruchio to solve the problem by marrying Katherine. Petruchio has come to Padua looking for a wife, and a rich one at that, so he agrees to marry Katherine. It might have solved everyone’s problems if Katherine had been interested. Instead, she pulls out a quiver of sharp words to fend off Petruchio, who is just as acid-tongued as she is. Suddenly, both sisters are embroiled in messy romances.

Kelly Coleman, a 2010 CR graduate, plays Katherine to real-life sister Brittani Coleman’s Bianca. Kelly said getting to play the older sister for once, and one so domineering and brooding, is enthralling, as is performing Shakespeare.

“It’s a class all in its own,” she said. “You have regular drama shows, you have musicals, but you never have the beautiful language of Shakespeare.”
Coleman describes Katherine as rash and bold, and she enjoys the witty lines and chance to “smack people around.” Especially her sister. The two of them have taken advantage of their relationship to be bold with their blocking, including a scene where Katherine drags a bound Bianca around the stage.

“We already have that sister chemistry,” she said. “It definitely makes the characters seem more real because you get the connections.”

Logan French, a 2005 CR graduate, plays Petruchio, and said his character is into Katherine for money and a challenge, not so much romance. By the end of the play, however, he said Katherine and Petruchio tame each other.
To French, the characters and themes are universal even today.

“When you think about it, you have a guy and a girl,” he said.

This is Muller’s first foray into Shakespeare and he thinks it might be one of CR’s best in recent years. Because of the open schedule summer allows, Muller has more time to work with the kids and they have more time for things like character development.

“Everybody’s only focused on this. The kids don’t have homework to do, I don’t have lessons to do. We can just focus on this.”

Email Sarika Jagtiani at sarika.jagtiani@doverpost.com