Review: To Have and To Hold Is Taming of the Shrew With a Liberal Arts Degree

Four centuries on, William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew remains a solid romantic comedy. It is arguably more relevant than ever in our age of heteropessimism, when the cultural gulf between men and women only seems to be widening. This surely inspired Laura Lapidus to write her modern-day riff, To Have and To Hold, now making its world premiere at Chashama’s 154 Theater. A breezily self-aware update on the classic, it’s sure to provoke post-show discussion even as it pulls its punches by dabbling in the kind of wish fulfillment for which rom-coms are infamous.

It opens in a bridal shop. Bianca (Tedra Millan) is trying on dresses for her upcoming nuptials, but her sister and Number One VIP (a non-problematic rebrand of “maid of honor”) Kate (Lapidus) can’t stop giggling at the white lace and eye-popping price tags. She considers marriage to be “an instrument of the patriarchy that capitalizes on the flagrancies of heterosexuality by selling long-term partnership under the guise of celebration in exchange for a woman’s total sovereignty.” Now who’s ready for the bachelorette party?

Kate is certain she’s not the marrying type. But then she bumps into Peter (Yuriy Sardarov) at the supermarket, and he immediately asks for her number. “I am moved to woo thee for my wife,” he tells this perfect stranger, and she answer in kind (“let him that moved you hither re-move you hence”) in what seems to be a flash Shakespearean daydream (Lapidus and Sardarov make these lines crackle with flirtatious electricity). She cannot wait to tell her sister.

Their deceased mother, an amateur Shakespeare scholar, named them after the two sisters in The Taming of the Shrew, allegedly to remind them of a tired sexist narrative and encourage them to break free of it. In hindsight, it looks a lot more like an example of nominative determinism. Bianca, who initially finds Kate’s third-wave Debbie Downer schtick annoying, eventually becomes more disturbed by her sister changing into someone she doesn’t recognize—someone happy. But when it comes to tightly held beliefs, love has a way of loosening our grip.

Millan and Lapidus have an authentic sisterly banter, complete with silly accents and childhood inside jokes. We completely believe that these two women have been making each other laugh for decades, and that makes this play’s insights about sisterhood and its adult growing pains the strongest aspect of the script.

The weakest is the mythic figure of Peter, a man so perfect he could only be the product of dizzy feminist invention. Yes, Lapidus seems to be telling the middle-aged single ladies in her audience, love will find you in the form of a rich, handsome, and endlessly patient doctor who has inexplicably remained unmarried well into his late 30s despite his clear desperation to lock down a wife—no matter how difficult she may be! If you ever meet a guy like Peter on Tinder, beware that you’re not falling victim to a swindle.

Luckily, the irresistibly charming Sardarov sells the unicorn he has been tasked with portraying, so well that by the end, we all want a ride. When Kate insists on excluding him from Bianca’s wedding, even though they have been dating for months, he persuasively argues, “Even if you and I don’t last, the wedding will be more fun if I’m there. And if you and I do last, I will never forgive you for not letting me come.” It’s his character’s most honest line, which is why he must immediately retract it lest he ruin the fantasy. “I take it back,” he says with a contrite smile, “I’m sorry. That was shit.”

Sardarov even helpfully suggests a believable flaw for Peter (a plastic surgeon) by drinking straight from a bottle of liquor like a pirate—though I suspect this is more a product of the limited budget offered scenic designer Se Hyun Oh, who has selected the perfect stainless steel kitchen island to convey the opulence of Peter’s penthouse apartment, but clearly didn’t have anything left over for glassware.

Director Zoë Adams does a decent job with limited resources, staging the transitions between scenes so there’s never a break in the forward motion of the plot. I especially enjoyed seeing the dressers in silhouette before the wedding scene, a lovely moment created by lighting designer Yang Yu, with surging dance music by Liam Bellman-Sharpe. Costume designer Mieka van der Ploeg not only makes the bridal scenes passable but hilariously captures Kate’s messy adult toddler style—again hawking the comforting myth that while straight men must and will conform to a platonic ideal, women can be free to be themselves.

In reality, we all must compete against the very best now that apps like Tinder have globalized the dating market. That means the theater of coupling will only grow more contrived and expensive in the coming years. But if you want to forget all that and settle in for easier fare, you could do worse than say “I do” to this light summer rom-rom.

See you this time next year for 10 Things I Hate About You.