Su Valley Drama to stage "The Taming of the Shrew"

Each year, Su Valley Drama takes a play by William Shakespeare and puts an interpretive twist on it. This year’s staging of The Taming of the Shrew will do the same, but the setting will be familiar to local audiences, according to Kenna Grenier, who plays Katherine, the titular “shrew” of the play.

“This year, we’re placing it in Talkeetna, so all of the characters have a job that would be in Talkeetna.”

To move the play to Talkeetna, the characters, as opposed to being from various Italian cities as in the original, come from around Alaska. Bailey Mischenko plays Petruchio, Katherine’s suitor. She explains that her character’s hometown has been changed to reflect the new Alaskan setting.

“All the other towns where people are from, which in the actual play are in Italy, are changed to towns throughout Alaska. I, being a man of Verona, am actually from Palmer.”

Why change the setting from Padua, Italy to Talkeetna, Alaska? Director Kathy Trump says many of the characters are travelers, a concept very familiar to Upper Valley residents.

“Petruchio and Lucentio are both travelers—they’re tourists—and they come to Padua, so we thought, ‘Well, where is a town that has a lot of tourists?’”

So, what will the transplanted characters be doing? Kenna Grenier explains that much of the plot centers on two sisters, Katherine and Bianca, and their suitors.

“Everyone wants to marry Bianca, but Katherine is the older one and has to be married off first. They try to find someone to wed her, and that is Petruchio, so the story is Petruchio trying to tame her.”

The concept of “taming” a woman is one that doesn’t sit as easily in 21st century America as it did in Shakespeare’s England. The original version of the play has Petruchio treat Katherine in ways that are misogynistic, perhaps even torturous. Kathy Trump says the selection of The Taming of the Shrew was unintentionally topical.

“I mean, it’s in the news every day, so it is a pretty topical play, but we weren’t thinking about that. We were thinking how funny it was.”

Trump says the cast and crew are mindful of the social issues in the play, and that one scene that would likely be particularly distasteful to modern audiences has been removed. The result is a classic happy ending.

The Taming of the Shrew shows Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at 7:00 pm at Su Valley.