[In the following review of The Taming of the Shrew at the Boscobel Restoration in 2000, Klein praises Nick Mangano's production, which focuses on a very human battle of the sexes, and lauds the excellent performances of Kurt Rhoades and Nance Williamson as Petruchio and Katherina.]

After the jubilant opening-night performance of The Taming of the Shrew at the Boscobel Restoration here, one woman, holding her daughter by the hand, promised to take her to the Broadway revival of Kiss Me, Kate. This is a sweet idea. It is provocative, too.

Practically speaking, members of the Shrew ensemble can get to Broadway in their own good time. But can the Broadway cast be bused to Boscobel? Do performance times conflict? Or dark nights coincide? I would gladly coordinate the trip: I will even drive the bus. Can an extra performance be squeezed in one fine morning? Better still, can the engagement be extended for a very long time? Must winter come?

Given the obviously contagious delirium of Nick Mangano's staging, it is hard to get a grip on a real world when such a wildly romantic and intrinsically harmonious and sane one has been conjured up by lovers, lunatics and magicians of theater.

Since it has become fashionable to regard Shrew as a pro- or anti-feminist statement, it comes as a revelation to behold the play about sparring lovers as a human, loving one.

Of course, Shakespeare was up to more than that in his complicated plot, which all too often fails to cohere when the seemingly arbitrary Induction Scene, involving Christopher Sly, a drunken tinker, along with a practical joker and his confusing attendants, begin the proceedings. All that nonsense, interchangeable with so many other plays in the canon, leads into a play-within-a-play, which happens to be The Taming of the Shrew as the world knows it. More confoundingly, Shakespeare's plot does not return to or resolve its beginnings, which is why the scene is easy to omit.

Mr. Mangano does not only include it, he also resolves it, most hauntingly with the image of a traditionally costumed player exiting, carrying a boom box. Since the Sly episode is staged, well, conventionally, given the company's trademark anachronistic excess, the last picture of a real show of shows emerges as a lovely statement about the possibility of values coexisting, say, classical and funk, the old with all things contemporary.

But wait. It's the rambunctious battle of the sexes everyone has really come to see. Will you root for the wily Kate, the irksome, brawling scold who negotiates her own taming? Or doesn't she? Will Petruchio, designated by Shakespeare as a gentleman of Verona, who will kill with kindness, as Shakespeare says he must, win the spoils of a war that has yet to end?

It does not matter. At this truly festive festival, two raging fires (Nance Williamson and Kurt Rhoads) do not meet, they ignite! The air sizzles. There is no contest. From his entrance, wielding a golf club, Mr. Rhoads is dangerous. Of course, he can act the gentleman. Mr. Rhoads, it seems safe to surmise, can act anything.

But that is the only safe bet when his Petruchio is around, about, up the trees, in your face, in his mad attire for a hilarious wedding scene. Mr. Rhoads is elegant, in or out of his pants, and he speaks the speeches with resonance and class.

Those trees out yonder on the glorious grounds surrounding the company tent are not safe when he is, well, twirling them. As for your face, not to worry. Others are apt to get spritzed, and Mr. Rhoades gets a pie smacked right into his. Here is a Petruchio to be tamed, and don't mess with his servant, Grumio (a gem of a classic and lowdown comic turn by James Coyle) as a caddy driving off in a golf cart.

That an actor of Mr. Coyle's caliber can underplay farce is just one of those ineffable things about a star-kissed ensemble. If Shakespeare's troupe of strolling players has ever been more entrancing, tell me where or when?

And the Fellini-esque entrance of the company is one of many joyous choreographic patterns that define the company's exuberant style, always true to the text, in its fashion.

Ms. Williamson cannot be and will not be forgot. Heaven help you if you dare.

Her Kate is ferocity incarnate. She is radiantly beautiful. Hers is that special face; there is happiness and fulfillment in it. Her final soliloquy, which can be interpreted any which way, can only be felt one way, it is so finely spoken and rich with feeling. As she kneels at the end of it, Mr. Rhoads stops her before her knee hits the ground, and then he kneels before her. Love is everywhere. That's all there is. It is heart stopping.

It is hard to think of a more accessible way to brush up your Shakespeare. It is hard to think at all, afterward. Imagine a G-rated family entertainment that can also be, for many, a most allowable visualization of sexual foreplay, a free-for-all farce that is precisely nuanced, transmitting a message that all of us should be free, a divine midsummer madness that inspires madness in others. If only such good times were here to stay.