This ‘Shrew’ Has the Last Laugh

“The Taming of the Shrew” is a tough play to tame.

Directors must a) engineer enough laughs during most of the play so that we’re in the mood to grin and bear Kate’s final capitulation to Petruchio, and b) try to suggest some explanation for Kate’s final behavior that won’t, at the very least, make us gag.

Sabin Epstein’s vigorous staging for A Noise Within, at Luckman Theater, Cal State L.A., treats most of the play as farce.

The big visual cue here is Tom Buderwitz’s set, an angled pair of walls with a different doorway popping open every few minutes. Occasionally a crowd materializes in a split second by using all the doors at once. This production moves like a whip.

The performances snap with farcical rhythms--and not just Robertson Dean’s Petruchio and Deborah Strang’s Kate but also Apollo Dukakis as Kate’s wide-eyed father, Jill Hill as simpering Bianca, Stephen Rockwell as a comically over-enunciating Hortensio, Chris Gerson and Michael McGuinness as Bianca’s favorite suitor and his smirking servant, and Jay Bell and Burton Sharp as the flustered old men.

This is the most enjoyable of three productions in repertory that have jointly launched A Noise Within’s residency in its new and larger home.

Of course Shakespeare’s comedy isn’t really a farce. If it were, Petruchio would get his comeuppance.

Which brings us back to that thorny final scene. Shakespeare offered little help; Kate has few lines that begin to suggest why her rebellion dissolves so amicably.

Is she just kidding? That appears to be the intent of a throaty laugh that Strang’s Kate shares with Dean’s Petruchio at a key moment in that scene. She’s pulling everyone’s leg, see? She wants to know how far these yokels will go in swallowing her woman-as-doormat speech. Petruchio, while not being part of her gag, at least appreciates her spunk.

This assumes that both Petruchio and Kate have a sophisticated taste for irony, and it’s possible to detect this here. Dean smiles as he tyrannizes; he knows that much of his bombast is pure baloney. And he brings out this same quality in his bride; Strang finally realizes how ludicrously overstated her previous shrewishness was. Their sense of humor is what ultimately connects them.

So Epstein and company generally get us through goals a) and b) without excessive second-guessing.

The second-guessing here occurs only if you saw the last major “Taming of the Shrew” done in this area: Mark Rucker’s staging at South Coast Repertory in 1996.

Rucker set the play in a late ‘50s/Rat Pack/Cosa Nostra Fantasyland, and the modern references hit comic bull’s-eyes right and left. He didn’t just distract us from the play’s problems; he dazzled us with his own additions, albeit with a much larger budget as well.

A Noise Within seldom applies this kind of conceptual overhaul to Shakespeare. But “The Taming of the Shrew” can use all the help it can get. Especially on a visual level, those who saw the South Coast production will be a little disappointed with the relatively flat canvas at A Noise Within.

The canvas in question--the mustard-colored walls that make up the set--look dusty and dingy. At one point, a servant dusts a wall, as if Epstein realized how it looked and tried to turn it into a gag. This particular gag doesn’t pan out, but there are plenty more where it came from.

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* “The Taming of the Shrew,” Luckman Fine Arts Complex, Cal State Los Angeles, 5151 State University Drive. Tonight at 8; Sunday,, 2 and 7 p.m.; Nov. 3, 5, 10, 8 p.m.; Nov. 6, 2 p.m.; Nov. 14, 2 and 7 p.m. Ends Nov. 14. $26-$30. (323) 224-6420. Running time: 2 hours, 25 minutes.

Robertson Dean: Petruchio

Deborah Strang: Kate

Apollo Dukakis: Baptista

Stephen Rockwell: Hortensio

Richard Soto: Grumio

Jay Bell: Gremio

Chris Gerson: Lucentio

Michael McGuinness: Tranio

Julie Remala: Biondello

Burton Sharp: Vincentio

Galen Shrick: Pedant

Jill Hill: Bianca

Anna C. Miller: Widow

Shakespeare’s comedy, directed by Sabin Epstein. Set by Tom Buderwitz. Costumes by Alex Jaeger. Lighting by Ken Booth. Music by Laura Karpman. Stage manager Brian L’Ecuyer.