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ORINDA – Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew,” a slapstick comedy about a man who beats his rebellious wife into submission, reflects an Elizabethan social view that makes modern day audiences uncomfortable. 

But director Lillian Garrett-Groag has given a different and very exciting spin to “Taming of the Shrew” in the California Shakespeare Festival production currently running at Bruns Amphitheater in Orinda. 

In this Cal Shakes production, Mhari Sandoval plays Kate the shrew as a rebellious punk, with short, spiky hair, and boots under her dress. 

This Kate is a very physically violent person. She breaks windows. She attacks her sister Bianca with a pair of scissors, trying to injure her. 

When people see Kate coming, they run. She chases people, attacks them and beats them. 

At one point, Kate lobs what appear to be cow flops off the roof of a building onto people walking in the street below.  

After her father sets her up in an arranged marriage, Kate shoots her fiancé Petruchio (Triney Sandoval) with a canon, and celebrates when he gets wounded.  

In her relationship with Petruchio, who is at first her fiancé and later her husband, Kate is the physically violent person and the batterer. It’s usually staged the other way around.  

Petruchio does not strike Kate once during this fascinating production. When Kate first meets Petruchio, she attacks him and knocks him down. Kate repeatedly initiates physical fights with Petruchio, who is about her size, and she wins them. 

But Petruchio is game for the battle with Kate. Like kids on a jungle gym, they chase each other over the rooftops. 

When the two unexpectedly kiss, there is an electricity that shocks both of them. This is definitely a love story, and there is a powerful ka-chung force in their relationship. 

Still, Kate and Petruchio spend a long time making each other miserable before they can deal with their affection for each other. 

The current Cal Shakes production is quite powerful for about three-quarters of the play. Then some of the air goes out of it. 

That happens during the scene in which Petruchio torments Kate over clothes he has offered to buy her. The production seems to lose its power in this scene because it is re-stating old information about the relationship that the audience already knows. It never quite gets its amazing energy back on track again after this point. 

Further, Kate’s famous final speech on wifely duty and submission at the end of “Taming of the Shrew” is especially difficult to shoehorn into this production’s otherwise fascinating interpretation – although director Garrett-Groag has created some nice moments at the play’s end such as Petruchio’s own heart-felt kneeling submission to his wife during her speech. 

There are many wonderful performances in the current production. 

Real-life husband and wife team of Mhari Sandoval and Triney Sandoval get some serious electrifying chemistry going as Kate and Petruchio. This gold-digging Petruchio, in his punky, leather pants, is a good match for firecracker Kate.  

Stacy Ross plays Kate’s supposedly mild-tempered beautiful sister Bianca in a very interesting way as an angry, impatient, sexually promiscuous rebel with red stockings, red garterbelt and red underwear under her virginal white dress. 

Sharon Lockwood (Bianca’s elderly stuff-shirt suitor Grumio) has a funny scene with romantic rival Søren Oliver (Tranio) where they pitch their credentials to Bianca’s long-suffering father Baptista (well played by Julian Lopez-Morillas). 

Other amusing performances include Colman Domingo’s starry-eyed Lucento, another suitor of Bianca; Patrick Kerr as Petruchio’s bumbling, simpleton servant Grumio; and Amy Mordechai’s hookah-smoking Widow, an interesting spin on that small character. 

Sometimes Garrett-Groag’s staging has the look and style of an edgy, underground comic book. At other times, with all the running around that Kate’s chaos causes, it has a slapstick, Keystone Kops vaudeville feel. There are lots of silly walks. But the staging is also very graceful. 

Scenic designer Narelle Sissons has given this production both a Renaissance look and a punk sensibility. There are towers, but their window panes are broken. The walls are graffitied. 

The set’s dominant wine-red color suggests that the whole town and its people may be soaked in wine. 

A huge empty wooden picture frame far upstage frames the beautiful Orinda hillside behind the stage and effectively reminds us that we are watching a story. 

Tracy Dorman’s distinctive costumes include skirts and trousers for the townsfolk that are grape-stained at bottom from stomping in the grapes at harvest time – once again giving the impression that people in this world may drink a lot. 

Victor Avdienko’s sound design early on includes the effective shattering of glass each time Kate arrives. 

Garrett-Groag and Cal Shakes have created a funny, colorful, zany, odd, and offbeat sensibility to “Taming of the Shrew,” and an important rethinking of the story. Except for the problems at its very end, this is a terrific production. 

“Taming of the Shrew” plays Tuesday through Sunday, through June 24, at Bruns Amphitheater, just off Highway 24 in Orinda, one mile east of the Caldecott Tunnel. There is plenty of free parking, and a free shuttle from the Orinda BART station. For tickets call 510-548-9666, or visit the web site (www.calshakes.org). Dress warmly. 

Following the Sunday, June 18, 4 p.m. performance, there will be a free talk at the theater on “Creating, Directing and Staging Classics Now,” hosted by Cal Shakes’ new Artistic Director Jonathan Moscone and Berkeley Rep Artistic Director Tony Taccone.