Review: THE TAMING at Theatre Unbound

Lauren Gunderson is the 8th most produced playwright in the US in the 2015 - 16 theater season, according to AMERICAN THEATRE. Make that 9th, if you count Shakespeare. And part of the reason is her 2013 farce, THE TAMING, which riffs loosely off Shakespeare's famously problematic sex comedy, THE TAMING OF THE SHREW.

And I do mean loosely! Here, Katherine is an aspiring beauty queen with a fierce agenda: to kidnap a right-wing senatorial aide (pants-suited Patricia, replacing Petruchio) and a liberal blogger (brunette Bianca), lock them in a room together, and force them to rewrite the Constitution so it works for our time.

It all gets pretty trippy pretty fast, with ether helping to create a time warp so we return to 1787 for the Constitutional Convention, before returning to the 'hell-is-other-people' hotel room and finally a brief jump forward to, yes, a female president. Katherine's famous final speech of surrender to Petruchio is reframed as Miss Georgia's notion of what advice James Madison would offer the current congress. Add in a senator behaving badly with an intern and the blogger's passionate campaign to save the North American Giant Pygmy PandaShrew and you get a sense for how wacky this script is.

There will be at least 8 professional productions of THE TAMING in calendar 2016, scattered around the country: as out-there as it is, it's just too tempting to mount political farce during this particularly gonzo election cycle.

Theatre Unbound joins this trend with their production at SteppingStone Theatre in St. Paul. Hampered by bad wigs and bad accents, the three busy actors who take on all the parts as Gunderson intends can't really achieve the speed and zaniness that this kind of farce requires. Nissa Nordland as Katherine comes closest to the outsized energy needed (which matters, since she's charged with George Washington and Martha Washington and Dolly Madison as well as Miss Georgia). Julie Ann Greif as Patricia (and James Madison) needs another, more manic gear. Kelsey Cramer as Bianca has some of her best moments as Charles Coatsworth Pinkney, intransigent slavery advocate back in 1787. Lengthy transitions underscored by distorted patriotic music further slow down the headlong rush needed in this 90 minute, intermissionless show.

Gunderson's text alternates between loopy dialogue (meant to be shot through with lesbian sexual tension, which wasn't much in evidence in this production), zingy one-liners, and speechifying. There are real ideas in play though no resolutions, and she's done her research -- not surprising for a playwright who also favors undertold stories from the history of science.

Theatre Unbound is one of dozens of smaller theater companies operating in the busy Twin Cities theater scene. Their mission ("to deliver thought-provoking Live Theatre conceived and created by women, providing audiences with engaging, rarely-seen perspectives on issues that are relevant and universal") is an explicit and welcome addition to the landscape. This production (which runs through September 24) may miss the mark but it is a worthy and important target. More information about upcoming projects is at their website, www.theatreunbound.com.

Photo credit: Scott Pakudaitis

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