What with how profound a pop cultural impact it had, it’s kind of weird to think that The Honeymooners only ran for only a few years. The roughly 40 episodes of the series made quite an impression on syndication in the decades after the show’s run in the mid-1950s. That pithy central conflict between husband and wife Ralph and Alice probably owes quite a lot to a strikingly similar dynamic between Petruchio and Katherina in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.
Maybe in light of this, The Off-Book Players’ upcoming staging of Shakespeare’s classic comedy actually makes a lot of sense. Josh Scheibe and Kristen Kraklow star as Petruchio and Katherina in a production set in the 1950s. Directed by Deanna Strasse with costuming by Amanda Schumacher, this can’t help but be a fun staging if for no other reason than sheer novelty and the fact that there just might be a lot of baby boomers seeing the show who just might make some kind of a connection between Petruchio and Katherina and Ralph and Alice.
The Off-Book Players’ staging of The Taming of the Shrew runs four performances only Jul. 30 - Aug. 1 at the Sunset Playhouse in Elm Grove. For more information and ticket reservations, visit Brown Paper Tickets online.
