“Ms. Lloyd’s streamlined ‘Shrew’ manages to tell Shakespeare’s original tale with briskness and clarity. And without disrupting its governing tone of a carnival-cum-political-rally, it sheds a bright light on patterns of language and behavior in the play...Ms. McTeer here gives us a Petruchio who is both a brazen caricature and an unnerving psychological study...Ms. Jumbo finds the natural woman in Katherina.”
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"One interesting effect of casting all women (and what women—the cast is packed with talented pros and newbies) is the partial suspension of unease over seeing females objectified, monetized and trained like animals. It lets the comedy do its work, and a lusty, charismatic actor like McTeer can swagger about like the rock star she is...The overall effect is a 'Shrew' that is subversive, sexy and, most of all, funny. Genuinely funny."
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"The frame that Phyllida Lloyd has devised for' Shrew' is neither satisfying as a workaround nor coherent in itself. It’s just kitsch, randomly applied and then run into the ground…Lloyd does nothing with the gender reversal except milk it for hike-up-your-trousers laughs. When the pageant frame returns very briefly and chaotically at the end, you feel cheated because it hasn’t achieved a thing…Only the great Janet McTeer gets around the conceit to some actual interpretive acting."
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"It’s not very funny. Boisterous and good-humored, yes, but 'The Taming of the Shrew' is a comedy or nothing, and I’ve never seen a staging that made me laugh less...Similarly bothersome is the conceptual vagueness of the production...The result is a slapdash extravaganza, one that is so heavily cut that the coherence of the play is diminished still further….Ms. McTeer is, needless to say, an actor of the first rank, but there is no comic relish to her performance."
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"Lloyd has transformed Shakespeare’s misogynist comedy into a tract with a laugh track…Played with glorious greasy swagger by Janet McTeer, Petruchio is a balls-grabbing, cock o’ the walk…Lloyd is utterly unfazed by Shakespeare, cutting the text, interpolating torn-from-the-headlines asides and adding a coda that restates the obvious. Yes, much of it is rollickingly funny; none of it is remotely romantic. Which is the point, I suppose...I loved it. And I hated it."
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"McTeer’s performance is randy, boisterous and consistently amusing. Cush Jumbo doesn't quite rise so high as the reluctant bride Katherina…Boasting an eclectic and talented ensemble, this revival of the unruly play is chockablock with ideas beyond its no-guys-allowed concept…When all is said and done, the Public Theater's free show doesn't add up and misses as many laughs as it lands."
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“Is this production gorgeously giddy—or just goofy?...Jumbo has plenty of spirit as Kate, and some of the comic fools are funny, but McTeer steals the show with her deliciously camp treatment of Petruchio...A hint of roughness about Petruchio’s 'taming' of his bride lends a soupcon of sado-masochism to McTeer’s bad boy impersonation. But it’s a theme that fails to work its way into the production style, which is all over the map."
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"Only intermittent sparks in this knockabout feminist burlesque...McTeer and Jumbo's casting is this production's chief reward...Some audiences no doubt will get a kick out of the staging, given the innately subversive fun of watching women make a mockery of a society of men...It’s impossible to overlook the fact that this unrelentingly blunt comedy just isn't very funny...The performers appear to be having way more fun than the audience.”
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