‘Shrew’ @ Falls Theatre

“Shrew” is not the infamous “Taming of the Shrew” you squirmed through in high school English. Nor is it the girlboss retelling you might imagine, or the Broadway or Hollywood adaptations you have seen. Directed by Bobbin Ramsey and using Shakespeare’s original text, this production does something entirely different.

With drag, puppetry and a cast full of Seattle stars, “Shrew” flips the story into a theatrical funhouse. As Ramsey explains, it explores “the socially constructed expectations of how men and women both violate our humanity and render us violent.”  Petruchio and Katerina, the couple at the center of Shakespeare’s story, clearly struggle with this. The play happens because they struggle. And where “The Taming of the Shrew” traditionally ends, Shrew keeps asking: how do we shatter the mirror, and how do we break free from these rules to build something new?

But let us not forget this is one of Shakespeare’s comedies. Yes, “Shrew” asks hard questions, but it does so with a carnival ride of a production that celebrates the “shrews” instead of villainizing them.

Now united as Union Arts Center, ACT and Seattle Shakespeare continue their tradition of challenging expectations onstage. After opening their season with “An Enemy of the People” to rave reviews, they turn to “Shrew,” somehow both classic and completely new.

Union Arts Center presents “Shrew,” a daring reimagining of Shakespeare’s classic that flips power, love and gender. Oct. 18-Nov. 2.