Jess Zlotnick

Dramaturg - Performed at Wharf 2 Theatre, Sydney Theatre Company

September 26th - October 15th 2025

The Taming of the Shrew

By William Shakespeare
Directed by Tasha O’Brien

“If I be waspish, best beware my sting”

Get ready to witness Shakespeare’s infamous battle of the sexes in a bold 70-minute production packed with grand Elizabethan costumes, devilish jokes and fresh twists. In this reimagined 1594, it is a matriarchal world where the women do the taming. This is Shrew like you’ve never seen it before.

In the plush and pompous town of Padua, suitors are lining up for a chance to woo the charming Bianca. But there’s a catch: Bianca can’t marry until Katherina is wed first. Unfortunately, Katherina isn’t exactly marriage material. Hot-headed and anti-social, no one will go near them. But when the cunning Petruchio takes on the shrew, their unconventional courtship reveals shocking revelations about the limits of love and power.

The Taming of the Shrew is Shakespeare’s most provocative comedy that sings with contemporary relevance, biting satire and profound insights into love, consent and everyone’s need to be accepted. Don’t miss your chance to be a part of the splendour, where historical elegance and contemporary mischief crash together for an astonishing night of theatre.

Cast

Megan Bennetts, Audrey Blyde, Mitchell Bourke, Erin Bruce, Sarah Greenwood, Mike Howlett, Megan Elizabeth Kennedy, Sonya Kerr, Will Manton, Karen Vickery, Natasha Vickery

Creatives

Director Tasha O’Brien
Dramaturg Jess Zlotnick
Set Nate Cook & Mitchell Bourke
Costume Helen Wojtas & Mitchell Bourke
Props Mitchell Bourke
Voice & Text Coach Patrick Klavins
Fight Choreographer Diego Retamales
Intimacy Coordinator Shondelle Pratt
Stage Manager Bianca Dreis Milne
Promotional Images David Hooley
Rehearsal & Production Photography Anna Kučera
Production Videographer Chloe Angelo

Is it Getting Hot in Here?

Author and Dramaturg, Jess Zlotnick, explores why The Taming of the Shrew seems to get us so hot and bothered.

There is a lot of fire in The Taming of the Shrew. Our heroes talk of burning meat, of hell and fire, and it’s no accident that Kate being called a ‘scold’ phonetically sounds like ‘scald’.

So, what happens when a fire consumes its fuel?

“And where two raging fires meet together
They do consume the thing that feeds their fury.”
Petruchio to Baptista

It burns out, right? And so would a first impression of Petruchio’s words to Baptista suggest: a union between a fiery Petruchio and Kate will end in them burning out, exhausting themselves, and losing their fire altogether.

Petruchio is a choleric character, who notices Kate’s similarly choleric disposition. Cholera is one of the four humours: bodily fluids that were considered to determine the balance of a person’s temperament. The humours were thought to be produced during the digestive process, in a very literal version of “you are what you eat.” Cholera is associated closely with heat, and fire, and a person with too much choler was thought to be irrationally angry, so it’s no wonder Petruchio rejects the meat Grumio serves:

“For it engenders choler, planteth anger,
And better ’twere that both of us did fast
Since of ourselves, ourselves are choleric.”
Petruchio to Grumio

In our modern lens of diagnosing and fixing personality and psychological “flaws” it’d be logical to suggest that a person with “too much” of something should seek to reduce or remove it for the good of their health.

And this is the accepted rhetoric about anger: an angry person is labelled as irrational, their arguments not worth hearing, they’re told to cool down, try again later, that their anger is unproductive and incapable of changing the things they’re angry about. This rhetoric would have us thinking that the answer is to quell your fire to make a better case in a world that wants to snuff it out.

But rage is not the sterile thing we take it to be, and this isn’t a play about burning out.

Petruchio sets out to tame Kate, but not at the expense of Kate’s true nature: Kate simply bowing to Petruchio’s demands does not satisfy the author, otherwise the play would end in Act 4. Kate isn’t tamed by thanking Petruchio for the meat (burnt or otherwise) - Petruchio only deems Kate’s taming as complete when Kate remains fiery:

“But sun it is not when you say it is not
And the moon changes even as your mind…
And so it shall be for Katherine.”
Kate to Petruchio

Kate is not so different for the taming: this section is still playful, and witty, pre-empting Petruchio’s game of changing the world to suit the taming. Kate is still fiery, but not in opposition to Petruchio, and from here their partnership becomes one of true understanding and allegiance against a backdrop of farce, mistaken identities, and unhappy marriages. Kate and Petruchio are the happy couple at the end because they are shrews in allegiance.

So I revisit Petruchio’s words to Baptista: Petruchio isn’t saying that she and Kate will consume their fuel and burn out, but instead that they will devour the cruel, false world of bargainings and deals they have found themselves in and emerge victorious, together.

The Kates of the world may be misunderstood, they may be frightened, or they may just be little shits. In the original context of Shrew a Kate burning against the injustice of her position makes sense, and her taming is a tragedy. The question we’ve been asking throughout our wrestling with the gender swap is if a male Kate’s anger makes sense in a world run by women. Were the roles reversed would his taming still be a tragedy?

But then I have to remind myself: we do not live in Kate’s gender-swapped world. We live in a world where on average one woman is killed by her intimate partner every nine days, where in the US the Supreme Court have been asked to overturn the marriage equality ruling from 2015, where in the UK the 2025 ruling on the definition of “sex” places trans people at risk every time they use the bathroom, where there are increased numbers of cumulative Indigenous deaths in custody every year in Australia, to name only a fraction of injustices this year alone.

In our world being angry isn’t shrewish: it’s a sane reaction to the cruel, unjust reality we live in. Rage is not only understandable, it’s essential.

So, Kates of the world: rage, please rage and burn and protest, but do not burn alone.

Where two (or an entire movement of) raging fires do meet they will consume the thing that feeds their fury.