Let’s mix metaphor: In The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare’s most misogynistic masterpiece, a small, long-nosed mammal named Katherina Minola ties her sister to a chair, beats her music tutor with a fiddle, and forages for seeds, insects, and worms. Intrigued by her volatile temper and unusually high metabolic rate, a zoologist named Petruchio Guicciardini captures Katherina in the wild, brings her back to his laboratory, and blows a trumpet in her ear until she can no longer move. Then they get married. Though the story courts a fair deal of controversy by suggesting that women are merely compact-bodied insectivores waiting to be deafened by the brass instruments of men, the delicate situation is in good hands with Woman’s Will, an all-female Shakespeare company scheduled to perform this theatrical doozy outdoors. As El Beh gets into drag to portray the determined Petruchio and Kate Jopson makes a series of ultrasonic squeaks to defend the title character’s territory, it’s easy to see why this tale of an invertebrate-eating creature and her human master belongs among the classics of Western literature.
Aug. 15-16, 1 p.m., 2009
