A Punk 'Shrew' at Off the Wall

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An aggressive, little punk isotope of Shakespeare claws its way onto the stage this fall as Off the Wall Theatre presents The Taming of the Shrew. The stage is empty save for a scattering of discarded cans. The angular walls are smeared with streaks of paint.

Alicia Rice plays the indomitable Katherine as a fierce one-woman riot. Her father wishes her to be wed. Judging from Rice’s performance, her Katherine wouldn’t simply prefer to remain single. She would also prefer to see the power structure that her father serves violently torn down.

Accepting the challenge of trying to win her affection is a similarly punk Petruchio played by Jake Russell. There is a sense of careless self-destruction about him. He possesses all of the same frustration that Catherine has, but takes it to an unbalanced extreme. There’s a real sense of madness about Russell’s performance in the role. He is rarely without a drink in hand. There is a spark of vulnerability running through everything he does. Nowhere is this more apparent than when he meets Catherine. She’s working out, boxing and jumping rope. He’s trying to keep up with her. Things get pretty aggressive. In the course of the scene she falls for his restless aggressiveness in a positively breathtaking fusion of affection and physical aggression.

Rice and Russell have a great chemistry together. His attempts to tame her play out here as something akin to true mental illness. She genuinely respects him and admires him. He doesn’t know what to do with that kind of love. And so he gets destructive with it. It’s an approach to the script that lands both Kate and Petruchio on a very even footing by the end of a very satisfying production.

Through Oct. 7 at Off the Wall Theatre, 127 E. Wells St. For tickets, call 414-484-8874.