In the Upcoming 'Shrew,' Love Is for Redder or for Worse

This Petruchio seems to be a bit on the skids, a figure of "faded glory," as Sissons puts it. The milieu grows increasingly scruffy as he hauls his wife home, thanks in part, oddly, to deluxe velour fabric that arrived mere days before previews began last week.

Once in hand, the material was spread out in the parking lot of the STC's scene shop in Maryland, where staffers doused it with dirty water and paint. Then, Sissons says, "we hacked at it with grinders and sanders and left it in the sun. By the time we were done with all that, it looked perfect."

Sissons, who studied in London and moved to New York 17 years ago, began hosting design meetings with Taichman and costume designer Miranda Hoffman last winter in her Manhattan office. (This production has been working slightly ahead of time to make way for the company's two-play Marlowe rep, opening next month at the new Harman Center for the Arts.)

The women were all "Shrew" sophisticates: This is Sissons's third experience with the show since 2000, and Hoffman costumed Taichman's commedia-style production when they were Yale undergrads a decade ago.

For Sissons, revisiting the classics is always a pleasure. "You can always play around and have fun with them," she says. "There's always a new point of view to be found, a new story to be told."

Although the director and designer aren't revealing many of this show's secrets, Taichman says: "It's contemporary, and in a funny way that wasn't even a choice. I felt we had a real shot at getting at where we are now. This could be us."

Sissons is only slightly more specific as she hints at the play's devilish ending, when the men compete to see whose wives are more compliant. "Kate's journey is quite powerful," she says. "By the end of the production the set is collaborating with her coming around. In fact, the whole way through, you could say the set is aiding and abetting the cause -- our cause."

And why place it in Italy? Sissons laughs: "Because it's fun to have a Fellini-style motorcycle with a sidecar."

Funny but serious, since intuitive responses frequently become part of her designs. "I can back it up with intellectual research," she says, "but often it's just that I feel this is going to be the solution to telling the story. And after all, that's what we're trying to do: tell a story."