Burbage Theatre Company's THE TAMING OF THE SHREW Begins Tonight

The Burbage Theatre Company presents a new take on 'The Taming of the Shrew' by William Shakespeare, for a limited run of seven performances at the William Hall Library in Cranston, RI. Burbage Theatre Company Artistic Director Jeff Church directs this whimsical farce about how we fall in love and the consequences that come with who we end up with.

Lucentio falls in love with Bianca, the enchanting youngest daughter of Signior Baptista. So do the cunning Hortensio and sickly Gremio. But before they may compete for her love, Baptista must marry off his eldest daughter Katherine. Her only fault? She is quick-witted, often mean-spirited, and prone to physical violence. But along comes Petruchio, a blunt swaggering rapscallion with a hunger to be wed wealthily and the social awareness of a stone. While the others pine and plot, Petruchio sets about to tame the wild Katherine in the most creative of ways.

Aside from its hilarity, having some of the best wordplay and physical exchanges early Shakespeare has to offer, this play is about sexual provocation, about making a game of the struggle for power in a relationship. The insular nature of such a game - so intimate a sport - brings about a much truer and desirable love than is expected at the beginning of the play. Framed as a play-within-a-play, Burbage's 'Taming' is a play about how the most successful relationships are not necessarily love at first sight, nor are they ever quite perfect from the start.

"The Shrew is as much a romantic comedy as it is a farce... Shakespeare, who clearly preferred his women characters to his men (always excepting Falstaff and Hamlet), enlarges the human, from the start, by subtly suggesting that women have the truer sense of reality."- Harold Bloom, from 'Shakespeare: the Invention of the Human'

'The Taming of the Shrew' begins previews tonight, March 5; opens on Saturday March 7 2015 @ 7:30; and closes on Saturday, March 21 2015.