Love Wrought These Miracles

I have an ongoing theme this week.

Get lost going to a play in the hinterlands and then sit back and watch love unfold.

A small price to pay for such pleasures.

Instead of south like last night, tonight a friend and I headed west, an even more challenging direction for its homogeneity, both in architecture and street-naming conventions.

After multiple wrong turns and dead ends, at long last we arrived at Steward School's theater for Richmond Shakespeare/Henley Street's must-see production of "The Taming of the Shrew."

Yes, I know there are people who dismiss this play as sexist, male domination over female, blah, blah, but as director Jan Powell pointed out in her notes, it can also be seen as a "deft depiction of how hard it is to make love work in the real world."

Amen, sister.

In a clever staging, it was set in 1930s Hollywood, with ditzy starlets, gangster types and seamed stockings, as a movie cast attempts to shoot TToTS in two hours.

Chalkboards are clapped, lines are forgotten, sets malfunction, and the enormous camera onstage captured it all.

The show began with a film of "coming attractions" showing on the enormous screen behind the stage set to classic newsreel music.

For the feature presentation, of course, it said, "Screenplay by William Shakespeare."

As a bonus, during set changes between scenes, one of the actors would go to the '30s-style microphone and croon a standard.

Blue Moon, I Get a Kick Out of You, Stormy Weather and my personal favorite, The Way You Look Tonight.

Considering it was preview night, the cast was moving seamlessly between movie actors waiting on set and Shakespeare's characters.

I burn, I pine, I perish.

In an interesting bit of casting, Petruchio's servant Grumio was played by a woman, Stacie Reardon Hall, and while such a thing would never have been allowed in Shakespeare's time, it totally worked here.

I'll attend her here and woo her with some spirit when she comes.

Liz Blake White was all fire as Kate, the woman who finally realizes that Petruchio is that rarest of things, a genuine partner, and accepts him on his terms, to the surprise of those who thought her shrewish.

McLean Jesse was her adorable, docile sister, all squeaky voice and delightfully superficial attitude which just made all the men want her more.

For I am rough and woo not like a babe.

When Mark Hackman as Petruchio shows up for their wedding, he is brilliantly and inappropriately dressed in a blue feather boa, pink wings, sunglasses, a wife beater and boots that don't match. With a fake snake wrapped around his arm.

Every girl's dream groom.

During intermission, the couple next to us got up and he returned first but patiently waited in the aisle for her. Climbing back over our legs, he said he'd done that to save us the trouble of being climbed over twice. A very sweet gesture, we said.

"He is sweet. I think I'll keep him," his wife said. I asked how long she'd been keeping him.

43 years, she said. Now that's a man who's been wooing with spirit well.

I'll curb her mad and headstrong humor.

The second act had Petruchio withholding food and sleep to bend Kate to his will and as a woman who thrives on those two things, I can only imagine how well this tactic would work on me.

Kindness in woman, not their beauteous looks, shall win my love.

The part of the story that dealt with the Hollywood actors had its best moments when the leads, a former happy couple now estranged, can barely spit out their lines at each other civilly.

For 'tis the mind that makes the body rich.

After clamorous kissing (a fabulous phrase for snogging) during the wedding, my favorite scene involves the three new husbands betting each other who has the most obedient wife.

Call me old school, but I find something very romantic abut how Kate shows her love by responding when her husband calls for her while the other wives put their husbands off.

Husband, let's follow to see the end of this ado
First kiss me, Kate and then we will
What, in the midst of the street?

You know what?

Yes, in the midst of the street or in the midst of a party or a restaurant or in the midst of anywhere he wants to kiss you.

Thereby hangs a tale...and a lesson in love.

It's enough to make you forget you're lost somewhere out in the bowels of the west end.