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A shrew's taming - played for laughs

Just what can you do with The Taming of the Shrew? Well, you can dress it up with all sorts of noble notions, claiming that it's a product of Shakespeare's time, when wifely scolds were frequent stage characters.

Just what can you do with

The Taming of the Shrew

? Well, you can dress it up with all sorts of noble notions, claiming that it's a product of Shakespeare's time, when wifely scolds were frequent stage characters.

You can insist that Kate - "the fiend of hell" is what she's called in the play's first minutes - isn't really beaten into submission by her suitor, Petruchio; he's merely playful in his quest to make her an independent woman with a deep inner karma. (A lot of scholars and less-invested folks have said such stuff. You can sense them immediately. They carry a heavy smell of baloney.)

Or you can do what the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, director Russell Treyz, and the cast of Taming is doing on the festival's stage in Center Valley, near Quakertown. You can accept that the comedy is one beautifully written, nasty play - and perform it purely for yuks.

The festival's take is intricately constructed and fascinating. It's as if the actors stand a few feet away from the play even as they present it, because the way they tell the story seems to mock Taming at almost every turn.

What emerges is just right: a laff-riot, as the tabloids used to say. Yes, it's true, even the life-force actor Grace Gonglewski - she portrays Kate with an eye-twinkle that clearly announces "it feels great to be a bitch!" - can't transform the play's ending, an embarrassing salute to subservience and, no matter how you cut it, a tribute to sexism. (To Gonglewski's credit, she doesn't even try to put a funny face on the Bard's famous final lines of tripe.)

The rest of it is a bow to the few things that are really good on Comedy Central, with antics worthy of Larry, Moe and Curly - and the fine-tuned production worthy of Manny, Moe and Jack. It's not just Biondello (Andy Wertner, with musical timing) or Grumio (the remarkable Chris Faith, a stitch) who are foolish. In this production, everyone's a fool.

The commanding Greg Wood plays Petruchio as if he were winging his wooing plan; when he assumes the same brawling stance as Kate, in order to confound her, he's not angry, he's exasperated. Gonglewski answers him, in turn, without real submission or resentment. "I'll play along," she seems to be saying, "because why bother challenging a lunatic?"

You have to fall for all this, for the nostril poking, the wet Willying, the arm twisting, cajone squeezing and butt smacking, the exaggerated line readings and comical inflections - and, above all, the skeptical take on things the characters assume. The audience certainly is sucked in; when the last scene came, with Petruchio betting on whose wives will obediently appear when their husbands call for them, people around me ooohed and aaahed with the cast at the outcomes, like studio onlookers at a game show. Now that's a Taming I can live with.

The Taming of the Shrew

Written by William Shakespeare, directed by Russell Treyz, set by Dana L. Kenn, costumes by Marla Jurglanis, lighting by Eric T. Haugen, sound by Matthew Given.

The cast: Grace Gonglewski (Katherina), Greg Wood (Petruchio), Zack Robidas (Lucentio), Matt Pfeiffer (Tranio), H, Michael Walls (Baptista), Rachael Joffred (Bianca), Wayne S. Turney (Gremio), Aaron Galligan-Stierle (Hortensio), Chris Faith (Grumio), Andy Wertner (Biondello), Caitlin Kinsella (Baptista's servant).

Playing at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival at DeSales University, 2755 Station Ave, Center Valley, Pa., through

Aug. 5. Tickets: $27-$45. Information: 610-282-9455 or www.pashakespeare.org.

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