kiss me kate

Despite a few somewhat vocal objections, I took my family to see the local Shakespeare Festival's production of "The Taming of the Shrew" this afternoon. I even insisted we all dress up (no flip flops or jeans). I did have to backtrack and allow Q to wear jeans, though, as his dress pants are now halfway up his shins. The jeans were at least clean. We had tickets on the second row, and spent the 30 minutes before the production reading the program and trying to untangle the twist of masquerades from the brief writeup. I had two very surprised children afterwards, who were still smiling after 3 straight hours of laughter. "I'm sorry I made you see such a yucky play," I told E, who smiled and punched me.



I asked her later what she thought about the message of wifely obedience. "It's FINE" she told me (She was playing GameBoy and didn't want me to disturb her). But I persisted because I figured it was my motherly and feminist duty to at least have her think about the premise.
"Do you think Kate decided to obey Petruchio because she wanted to?"
"Probably," E said, essentially brushing me off with a wave of her hand. I dropped it. I'm not worried about her deciding to devote her life to one of blind obedience.



Whatever your take on it, I can't deny the satisfaction of seeing the two characters start to fall in love and the way he whisks her out of the banquet at the end for a visit to the wedding bed. The director of this production went the route of explaining Petruchio's apparent cruelty with humor, and had Kate laughing uncontrollably over calling the sun the moon and a gentleman traveler a young virgin. Petruchio was consumed with laughter and good humor, too, and for the rest of their time on stage, they shared smiles and chuckles and quiet laughter. I was satisfied with that. I have no idea what Shakespeare really intended, and I don't know that it matters that much. What does matter is that today, I taught my children (and husband) how much fun a live play can be, and that Shakespeare ROCKS.