Wes Dennis as Petruchio and Melissa Schick as Maria in “The Tamer Tamed.”
For Valentine’s week, The Rude Mechanicals present “The Tamer Tamed,” directed by Liana Olear and produced by Joshua Engel. The first performance was available February 13 on YouTube. There will be a second showing on February 20, 2021. The play was written around 1608 by John Fletcher, a contemporary and sometime collaborator of Shakespeare, and is a sequel to the Bard’s “The Taming of the Shrew.”
The premise is Petruchio (Wes Dennis) is now a widower. Kate has sadly died. He is now looking for a new wife and chooses her cousin, Maria (Melissa Schick). However, unlike Kate, Maria is not tamable. She uses refusal to perform her wifely duties as a way of controlling Petruchio. Not only she, but all the women in the town, decline to have conjugal relations with their mates. In the mix is Maria’s sister, Livia (Linda “Spencer” Dye), who would like to marry her love, Rowland (Sarah Pfanz).