Shrew(d) Observers

In a presidential election cycle as bizarre and theatrical as this one, it’s fitting that some of our weirdest art would start to imitate political life. Lauren Gunderson’s play The Taming — inspired in part by Shakespeare’s comedy The Taming of the Shrew — pokes fun at America’s sound-bite politics in a cheerfully absurd storyline that mixes a battle of the sexes with the all-too-familiar strife of red state versus blue state. In the words of Shakespeare & Company: Our nation’s “overheated political rhetoric is exposed through the passions of three slightly insane women who just might be revolutionary geniuses.”

 The Taming: Thursday at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday at 3 p.m.; Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. $15. Shakespeare & Company, Elayne Bernstein Theatre, 70 Kemble St., Lenox. (413) 637-3353, shakespeare.org. 

— Hunter Styles