Grace Litzau, Jane Froiland, and Nora Targonski-O'Brien Photo by Alex Clark

But rather than throwing up its arms in despair, The Taming offers a solution: follow James Madison's advice and treat the U.S. Constitution not as a revered decree for governance, set in stone for all time, but as a work in progress created by fallible people, like ourselves. The play's primary voice of reason calls for taking Article V at its word and drafting a new Constitution. The argument is made in this surrealistic, heavily satiric comedy that opened Yellow Tree 2026-2027 season this past weekend.

And who is that voice of reason? Why, it's Miss Georgia, given name Katherine, vying for the title of Miss America while tossing out a "bless your heart" after every third sentence. The play, which runs 90 minutes without intermission, opens with Miss Georgia wearing a red, white, and blue spangled gown with a high slit skirt, warbling "America the Beautiful," her talent competition entry.

The scene quickly switches, as if someone changed the channel, to Patricia, chief of staff for an arch conservative U.S. Senator, whose jobs bill is poised to finally get through Congress. Patricia controls every move the (unnamed) Senator makes, writes his speeches and correspondence, and considers herself the force behind his electable façade. Another quick-change of channels brings us Bianca, a far left-leaning media influencer currently conniving to defeat the jobs bill because the creation of those jobs will cause the destruction of the habitat for the endangered giant pygmy panda shrew.

Next thing we know, Patricia and Bianca find themselves waking up in a hotel room, the bedding rumpled, wondering if they had sex last night and acknowledging they would have been too drunk to remember if they did. The fact that Patricia is not wearing pants may be a clue. Then they realize, to their mutual horror, that both of their phones are missing. On top of that, the hotel room doesn't have a landline and the door is locked so they cannot leave. Red State and Blue State–as they deprecatingly call one another–are trapped together, ala Sartre's No Exit.

At this juncture, Miss Georgia appears to tell them she has dropped her original Miss America platform–"sunglasses for babies, bless their little hearts"–in favor of calling for a re-do of our Constitution. She needs Patricia, with her conservative bona fides, and Bianca, with her liberal street cred, to work with her. To make sure they agree, she has hidden their phones (and Patricia's pants) and secured the door. When they object that it's a ridiculous notion because they don't agree on a single thing, Patricia points out that neither did the original framers of the Constitution, yet they hammered out a plan–imperfect as it is–that has gotten us by for over 200 years.

The midsection of the play takes the form of a fever dream, in which these three politically charged characters transform into two of the Constitution's framers, its principal author, James Madison, and staunch state's rights advocate Charles Pinckney, of South Carolina, with George Washington around to toss pot shots at the endeavor.

Austene Van, Yellow Tree's executive artistic director, directed this production. Van is an exacting artist who does not make haphazard choices. Her choices here intentionally make it easy to connect the dots between the deep ideological–and stylistic–divide between the characters, and our current national state of affairs. The Taming premiered in 2013 in the heart of the Obama era, and I saw a production ten years ago by (the sadly defunct) Theatre Unbound. The issues Gunderson raises in The Taming were trenchant then; now they feel like a 911 call to the fire department, as a blaze spreads through civic society.

The production itself is full of good choices, starting with casting Jane Froiland as Patricia, Grace Litzau as Katherine, and Mora Targonski-O'Brien as Bianca. Froiland totally embodies Patricia's ambitious strategies, believing that as a conservative woman she can accomplish a lot more behind the scenes than she ever could in elected office. As Bianca, Targonski-O'Brien plays fast and loose with Gunderson's overly broad stereotype of a left-wing activist with bleeding heart sentimentality and arguments that don't quite add up, as when Patricia champions the jobs bill as a program to put people to work and back on the tax rolls and Bianca responds in full-out anger: "The giant pygmy panda shrews would pay taxes if they could!."

The program credits state that this show marks Litzau's professional debut, and if that's accurate (or even if it's not), it's a humdinger of a performance, aping all the tropes of a southern beauty pageant queen, then flipping a switch to become a bright, articulate, manipulative, and sometimes angry champion of democracy and the concept that America was founded with the aim of continually becoming a "more perfect union."

Samantha Fromm-Haddow's costume designs smartly capture the zeitgeist of each character, while Sarah Brandner set design, a mid-range hotel room with its dreary transient nature readily apparent, provides an apt setting for these political rivals to converge. Alex Clark's lighting design and Jeff Bailey's sound design serve the needs of the production well.

Gunderson has done the play a disservice titling it The Taming, which says nothing about the theme, content, or relevancy. Gunderson has stated that the play was inspired by Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, but that connection turns out to be slight. Yes, the three sparring characters are named Katherine (the titular shrew in Shakespeare's work), Bianca (sister to Shakespeare's Katherine), and Patricia, which can be taken as a distaff version of Petruchio, Shrew's leading male. In Shakespeare's work, Petruchio "tames" Katherine, but nothing in Gunderson's plot parallels that. Patricia is a lesbian who engages in some sexual innuendo with Katherine, but the more likely pairing was the night before, with Bianca–which would be akin to Petruchio having relations with Katherine's sister. No, the connection doesn't serve the play well, and the title adds little meaning to the play.

That is, with one exception: near the end of The Taming, when Katherine delivers a speech that is an obvious parallel to the "I am ashamed that women are so simple.." monologue from Shakespeare's Katherine. Right there, for a couple of minutes, the connection to The Taming of the Shrew sings. Otherwise, it falls flat.

Not that the lack of that connection makes The Taming any less of a play. It is a strong, extremely funny comedy, with a narrative that, despite (or perhaps thanks to) its fanciful composition, challenges us to think about just what is happening to our nation's self-proclaimed model democracy and what can be done to forget the old rationales and founding father mythology, look squarely at the world as it is today, and build anew from there. All that, while disarming us with a steady stream of "bless your heart."

The Taming runs through November 1, 2026, at Yellow Tree Theatre, 320 5th Ave SE, Osseo MN. For tickets and information, please call 763-493-8733 or visit YellowTreeTheatre.com.

Playwright: Lauren Gunderson; Director: Austene Van; Set Design: Sarah Brandner; Costume Designer: Samantha Fromm-Haddow; Lighting Design: Alex Clark; Sound Design: Jeff Bailey; Props Artisan: Jacey Stewart; Technical Director: Justin Hooper; Stage Manager: Grace Happe; Assistant Stage Manager: Valencia Proctor; Production Manager: Joelle Coutu.

Cast: Jane Froiland (Patricia), Grace Litzau (Katherine), Nora Targonski-O'Brien (Bianca).