TAMING: A FOLKTALE Sinks its Teeth in Shakespeare's Age-Old Story. Discover Who The Real Monster Is.

Photo by Stephen Brodie

Taming: A Folktale

Based on Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare

Directed by Cheyenne Haynes

Produced by Witches 3 at the Bath House Cultural Center, Dallas

Audience Rating:  R
Running Time: two hours with one 15-minute intermission
Accessible Seating: Available
Hearing Devices: Not Available
ASL Showing: Not Available
Sound Level: Comfortable
Audio/Visuals To Prepare For: fight scenes, use of blood, violence, coffin used in death scene

Reviewed by Dan C. Rogers

TAMING: A FOLKTALE has a bite to it. Sticking it’s neck out to examine how easy it is to fall for a narrative while exploring who the monster really is. 

Director Cheyenne Haynes and new Theatre production team Witches 3 deserve high praise for the innovative, creative, fascinating direction of this work that is a contradictory love story. It’s a story of finding love and understanding with someone who takes you exactly as you are. Setting the Shakespeare classic in the Appalachia environment of 1908, enabling audience members to easily follow and comprehend the rhythm and rhyme of The Bard’s genius with language. Taming: A Folk Tale keeps Shakespeare’s original text, but it takes place in a Southern Gothic world with a bloody twist. Kate (Katie Wetch) and Petruchio’s (Meagan Harris) whirlwind romance becomes a story of vampires, superstition, and a community ready to turn on anything it doesn’t understand. 

Unlike many traditional readings, with the play representing a story about patriarchal power, this production uses the supernatural to explore otherness, queerness, power imbalance, and what truly makes someone a monster. 

Witches 3 is a Dallas based woman-and queer -run theatre company, creating daring stories with sharp teeth and unapologetic spirit. They make Theatre bold, strange, playful, and unafraid. Witches 3 is a brand new organization looking to support the wild and beautiful artistic community in DFW. Learn more at withches3.com and follow on Facebook, Instagram & TikTok. 

Accompanied by live music composed by Justin Locklear, Sarah Nicole Rogerson and Eric Talamantes this production displays exquisite timing and coordination with action and dialogue. Choreography (Hannah Alyea,) and Fight Choreography (Brandon Wetch) are innovative and artistic, with impressive and challenging episodes of dance, fights, and falls. You can literally hear the sound effects in your head. A fist is thrown and the slow-motion sound effect Zzzzzzzzaaaaaaang is there. Surprised to learn that Taming of the Shrew had fight scenes? Listen to the hostility and verbal sparing between Petruchio and Katarina – it is a true thirteen round heavyweight prize fight that is represented in many productions with physically active staging. With the Witches 3 production a charismatic and supremely confident Meagan Harris as Petruchio dominates the stage and the focus of the audience. Quite equal to combat, Katie Wetch is the stunningly contrary, and aggressive shrew, Katarina, who parries and attacks with coordinated dialogue and grace. Salute to Intimacy Director Claire Fountain for the natural acceptance of the love between Petruchio and Katarina

The clever set is multi-layered, conforming to the structure of the Bathhouse Cultural Center, steps and flights extend elongated to include the intimate seating parallel along both sides of the action. Director Cheyenne Haynes uses challenging approaches to ‘line of sight’ and ‘stage pictures’ to give the audience a feeling of involvement and intimacy, you are literally in the circle of the action. 

The multi-talented Whit Bates, sings and plays guitar as Hortensio, a lusting, physically active, aggressive, blood thirsty, impulsive, and ultimately worse-for-wear vampire. Not to be a spoiler alert reviewer, but prepare yourself for the coffin scene at the conclusion of Act One.  

Strong supporting actors hold their own with clever and highlighted opportunities in this production. Jasonica Moore as Bianca is pouty, spoiled, rebellious, and jealous in a feisty, eye-catching performance. Strict Baptista portrayed by Malcolm Stephenson is a dominating presence, fully frustrated by his daughters and the onslaught of suitors for his youngest daughter’s hand, versus the bitter caustic tongue of his oldest. Scene stealing and off-the-cuff muttering of Signor Gremio with Dennis Raveneau is a comedic touch enjoyed by the audience. Aren Hugo plays the studious tutor Tranio in a subtle yet frustrated nerd-like pretense of deception. Rowan Gilvie is a Lucentio of passion and longing for the hand of Bianca. The entire cast continues the feel and mood of the setting and the time period. 

Taming: A Folktale runs Oct 29- Nov 14 at the Bath House Cultural Center in Dallas. Tickets can be found at witches3.com or at Box Office number, 214-901-6522. This production is the perfect adult- oriented Halloween fantasy; as riveting and shocking as a haunted house, but with fang-tab-u-lous entertainment, just what the doctor ordered.

DR

Photos by Zach Huggins

More Photos by Katelyn Jackson