“This is not the story of a man getting out from under the thumb of a domineering woman, and turning the tables on her, but of a man choosing a difficult woman whom nobody else sees the virtue of.”

“Hay is the angriest Katharina I have ever seen. Her rage burns fierce and lasts long, intimidating nearly everybody with whom she shares the stage and alarmingly audible even when she’s off it. This of course is how the role is written, but few actresses are this uncompromising about it”

“Chris Abraham has directed a a keenly thought, very energetic, athletic production…The play is a challenge, but this stunning, beautifully directed and acted production rises to the occasion, upends preconceived notions about it and makes you think deeper.”

“From the moment of reading Chris Abraham’s director’s notes in the house program, no one should think that his interpretation of Taming of the Shrew is anything but thoughtful and modern. Mr. Abraham puts his finger on the crux of Shrew – no one is who they seem to be. It is meta-theatre at its best – we know the characters are actually actors, but Mr. Abraham takes this a step further…”

“Hilarious before intermission, deeply unsettling and implicating after…The performances of Carlson and Deborah Hay are both excellent – though Hay’s is truly beyond compare…her work becomes gut-wrenching. When forced to call the sun the moon by her husband, she writhes as each word comes out. This is what it is to watch a spirit crushed.”

“Hay played her Katherina as a fireball who can more than hold her own. One gets the sense that she wasn’t quite tamed by Petruchio (an excellent Ben Carlson, who displayed sizzling chemistry with Hay) so much as she understood his tactics and had a strategy of her own.”

“Abraham interprets courtship as a form of theatre — even if too much like vaudevillian melodrama at times — in which lovers play roles, whether assigned by parents, class, status, social attitudes or romantic expectations. We are all players in interchangeable parts.”

“Chris Abraham’s production is a solid enough job that yields plenty of laughs, thanks to some daring staging, brilliant comic performances from the likes of Tom Rooney and Gordon C. Miller, as well as a swashbucklingly magnetic, perfectly spoken performance from Ben Carlson as Petruchio.”