The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 57, No. 26, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 30, 1970 Page: 1 of 8
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rice university, houston, texas
volume 57, number 26 thursdav. anril If >70
Shrewd comedy fames Baker's Shakespeare audience
By DANIEL KELLY
In Luigi Pirandello's essay
Umorismo a distinction is
drawn between' the comedian,
the man whose art avoids sug-
gestions of abnormality and
bitterness by simply laughing at
human folly and illusion, and
the humorist, whose special
capacities for reflection upon
such folly and illusion generate
in Pirandello's words, "a sense
of contradiction, perplexity, un-
certainty, a certain wavering
state of consciousness." Shake-
speare's Taming of the Shrew
may cause more waverings in
the consciousnesses of its audi-
ence this weekend, and since
Shakespeare was writing what
Pirandello calls comedy, not
humor, such wavemgs could
cause problems—perhaps even
misunderstandings of the play's
effect.
Now Pirandello reflects the
radical philosophical relativism
and psychological insecurity
which are the peculiar inherit-
ances of twentieth-century man,
and Shakespeare naturally can-
not be held responsible for our
subjective, unhistorical reac-
tions.
But the fact is that this play
won't stand much thinking
about it. What were for Shake-
speare and his contemporaries
communal truths are for most
of us communal lies. The in-
trinsic superiority of men over
women, husbands over wives,
lords over commoners and com-
moners over servingmen are
conceptions which intervening
democratic and liberterian
ideals force us to regard with
superior amusement or skepti-
cal alarm.
It may be that Western so-
ciety continues to behave —
particularly in the case of what
is now called male sexism—as
if ideas such as these were true,
even though no one seriously
believes them. Inertia is strong.
But at the end of The "Taming
of the Shrew, every character
in the play agrees that they
are true, and so, no doubt, did
the younig Shakespeare who
wrote the play and the^ audi-
ences which first saw it.
Induction and Play
The play opens with an In-
duction set in an alehouse yard.
A drunken, disreputable tinker,
Chx'istophero Sly, has rampaged
through the tavern glassware
and defended himself from the
attacks of the alewife (Arlene
Allison). Sly falls asleep while
the hostess goes for the cops.
They never arrive. Instead,
a lordly practical joker (Wesley
Morris), newly arrived from a
hunting trip, conceives the ac-
tion of the rest of the play: the
sodden Sly is to be transformed
from lumpen into lord by
showering him with expensive
haberdashery, music, paintings,
elaborate service, and that
indispensable accoutrement of
the refined gentleman, a
woman. Drama itself is to be
an instrument of Sly's accul-
turation to the ways of the
rich. The lord engages a troupe
of itinerant players to enact
before the transfigured Sly—
The Taming of the Shrew.
Imaginative casting and di-
rection by Wesley Morris has
gone into relating the Induc-
tion to the rest of the play. Sly
(Tom Nichols), for whom the
players perform the .Shrew, is
doubled as Petruchio, and as
such becomes simultaneously
hero and audience. Three play-
ers (Charles Tanner, Jim Rol-
lins, Becky Greene) reappear
in Act I, scene 1 as Lucentio,
his servant Tranio, and Bianca,
sister of the shrew.
What this doubling and its
reinforcement in the costuming
suggests is, of course, the age-
old theme of appearances and
realities, in which the chaotic,
Dionysian forces in the Induc-
tion (madness, social license,
dreams, art, suspension of ordi-
nary rational consciousness)
may be linked with the order-
ing-, Apollonian form of the
themes in the Taming section
and subsumed into them dra-
matically.
The main plot thus set in
motion concerns the marriage
of Petruchio, an itinerant
soldier of fortune, to Katherina,
shrewish elder daughter of a
Paduan bourgeois, and her
eventual submission to his
authority. Becky Bonar's Kate
is a skillful blend of unself-
conscious, unprovoked orneri-
ness early in the play and
subtly ironic manipulative
power in the final scenes where
she appears pious, mild, and
submissive instead of "curst,
shrewd, and forward." The
danger of playing Kate as
conscious in the last scenes is
that Petruchio, her tamer, may
emerge as a dupe instead of
super-duper, but Tom Nichols'
very strong performance as
Petruchio doesn't let it happen.
While Petruchio and Kate
work out their love-hate rela-
tionship, a conventional Italian-
ate subplot develops over who
shall marry Baptista's younger
daughter Bianca. The eventual
winer is Lucentio of Pisa,
played by Charles Tanner as
an appealing puppy lover with
a brainless smile and a burst-
ing heart of purest gold. Becky
Greene as Bianca communi-
cates her beauty—the obvious
requirements for lovers like
Lucentio—in ample measure;
but what Lucentio misses is
Miss Greene's spirited sugges-
tion of a strong shrewish
streak in her own genes, clear-
ly inherited, like Kate's from
Donald Bayne's shrewd Che-
shire-cat Baptista. The misper-
ception costs Lucentio a hun-
dred crowns.
There are strong perform-
ances in the supporting cast by
Dennis Huston as Grumio, Pet-
ruchio's irascible servant/foil
and obscene mirror of his mas-
ter's sexuality; by Mike Mullen
r.s Vincentio, Lucentio's aged
father; and especially by Bill
Wells as Biondello, a miniature
masterpiece of insincere cring-
ing and thinly-disguised resent-
ment who capitalizes on a
Texas treble and a gymnast's
grace to give the show's most
finished supporting perform-
ance. Wells' solo in Act III.
scene 2, announcing Petruchio's
arrival for the wedding is
superb acting, beautifully set
off by Bayne, whose Baptista
drops even his Cheshire smile
in a fit of acquisitive anxiety.
Wes Morris has used the
Baker Dumbbell Stage eff,-. -
t-ively to balance groups •>:'
opposed characters and sugaw
important nuances. In the In-
duction, Sly and the lord's m ;i
on one end of the stag'1 . r-
seduced in a group—sly for
real, the servants into helplo--
laughter—by Dennis Huston on
the other end in a virtuoso drag
T)it as tllO ^ ^T?1r)fxTc,p(r -
ator Baz-tholomew. The lines of
force are almost visible. When
Petruchio enters to meet Bap-
tista for the first time, he omt.
stride fully 30 feet across the
stage in an unbroken sweep
past five timider suitors, and.
Morris has the line retraced
a few phrases later by the un-
fortunate s u i t o r Hortensi >
(Lance Bateman), in a halting
but parallel expression of
cowardice and insecuritv.
Rice hosts conference meets
Houston sports fans will have
a chance to see top-flight
collegiate competition in four
sports this weekend, as the
Rice Owls host the Southwest
Conference championships for
the first time in eight years.
The Rice entries are favored
in tennis, have a good shot at
the track and field title, may
have something to say about
who finally cops the baseball
crown. And then there's golf.
The winless Owl team was
rated slightly better than even
Receipts lost
A large share of the re-
ceipts from last weekend's
Rondelet activities were
stolen Monday. Almost half
of the receipts were in
checks. The Student Associ-
ation requests that those who
paid by check write them
another one, since the SA
neds the money desperately.
If the stolen checks are
cashed, the SA will refund
the money. Any information
regarding the theft should
be turned in to Dean Wierum
or to Campus Security.
money to show up this morning
at Atoscocita Country Club.
Preliminaries in tennis and
golf were scheduled to begin
today, with golf finishing to-
morrow, and track and tennis
finals on Saturday. The Owl
baseballers had a doubleheader
scheduled today with the un-
defeated Texas Longhorns, who
are fighting it out with A&M
for the conference title. The
two squads have a single game
tomorrow.
Rice should field an excellent
track team, but they will have
to exert a top effort to edge
the favored Aggies. A&M, with
the great Mills brothers and
top sprinter Rockie Woods,
have excellent spring times in
the double-point relay events,
though they may get a hard
push in the mile relay from the
Rice , runners, Denny Dicke,
Steve Straub, Chip Grandjean,
and Bill Askey. The Owl quar-
tet logged an impressive 3:06.6
at the Drake Relays last week.
Rice should also pick up a
lot of points in the pole vault,
where three of their vaulters,
Dickie Phillips, Larry Curtis,
and freshman Dave Roberts,
have already gone over the
SWC record of 16 feet ever..
Phillips has a season best of
16-7, and has barely missed 17
feet on two occasions. The poIa
vault finals will be at 2 prn
tomorrow in the Rice track
stadium.
The Owls could score in the
high hurdles, with Greg Gilli-
land, last year's SWC cham-
pion, Jack Faubion, a track Ail-
American. two years ago. and
Bob Laubenberg.
If current performances mean
anything, freshman Jim Pearce
should score. an easy win in
the javelin. He has tossed the
spear 36 feet farther than any
other SWC performer this year,
and is only seven inches off
the all time SWC record, set
in 1963 by Rice trackman Ed
Red.
The big relay and sprint
events get under way at 5 pm
Saturday, following the comple-
tion of the doubles tennis cham-
pionship, which will be played
at 1 pm. The singles competi-
tion will be Saturday morning
at the new Jake Hess Memorial
Tennis Stadium next to the
gym.
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Murray, Jack. The Rice Thresher (Houston, Tex.), Vol. 57, No. 26, Ed. 1 Thursday, April 30, 1970, newspaper, April 30, 1970; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth245083/m1/1/: accessed April 23, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.