It’ll be a case of “Kiss me, Kit” when Karen Vickery’s gender-bending production of The Taming of the Shrew fronts up to audiences in the seventh iteration of Lakespeare: Shakespeare by the Lakes VII.

With free outdoor park shows, a preview pub show at Verity Lane, indoor ticketed performances at Belconnen Arts Centre and a dining/theatre experience at Pialligo Estate, it’s billed as a show for all the family – though new audience members might need a little guidance.

Vickery didn’t invent the idea of playing around with gender in one of the most famously sexist plays of all time. At Sydney’s Wharf Theatre late last year she played Baptista, parent to the shrew Katherine, in a production by The Playwrought Project that proposed a world where women do the taming. In that same production, her daughter Natasha Vickery played Petruchio, and the company has given its blessing for her to use their 60-70 minute cut-down version of the Bard’s original as a starting point.

“In Sydney, I felt that it wasn’t always entirely success so I wanted to take it further,” she says, explaining that she’s changed not just the genders of the characters but their names. Petruchio, now played by Ylaria Rogers, becomes Petruchia, and she sets her sights on the eldest child of the household – no longer Katherine but the hot-headed Christopher (Kit), played by Michael Cooper. There are three male actors and the rest are female.

The more in-demand Bianca is now her brother Bianco, and the company says the story runs like this: “With suitors lining up for a chance to woo the agreeable Bianco, their mother declares there will be no marriage until the older is wed first.”

But hang on – didn’t we all think the word suitor was masculine? Not anymore. And in any case, a quick visit to the dictionary reveals a second meaning: “a prospective buyer of a business or corporation,” fitting neatly with Vickery’s assertion that this play is as much about money as about love.

The gender-switching turns out to be a clever way of dealing with a play that even Vickery agrees is highly contentious when viewed through a modern lens, reeking of sexist misogyny in lines such as Petruchio’s: “I will be master of what is mine own; She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house.”

“There’s no question of it,” Vickery says, but it looks very different when females pursue males.” Still, she agrees the cruelty remains, as Petruchia deprives Kit of food and bamboozles him with passive-aggressive violence.

It certainly doesn’t put Shakespeare in a favourable light when you hear the original Petruchio justifying starvation and domestic abuse with: “My falcon now is sharp and passing empty,  And, till she stoop, she must not be full-gorged … Another way I have to man my haggard, To make her come and know her keeper’s call.”

Vickery concedes all of that, but is confident that twisting the genders puts the relationship in a new light, allowing Petruchia and Kit – each an outsider unable to fit into society – to become a good match for each other. There is a happy ending: by the end they will have found their own way into a relationship.

“In the end it’s about two different people who come together and discover, through their relationship, something really worthwhile. This contrasts with the somewhat fractured bond between Lucrezia and Bianco.”

Even so, many audience members will be hanging out to see what Cooper makes of the infamous lines: “Thy husband is thy lord, thy life, thy keeper, Thy head, thy sovereign, one that cares for thee … And craves no other tribute at thy hands But love, fair looks, and true obedience.”

After two years of slightly more sober Lakespeare fare with Henry V and Macbeth, it’s time for comedy.

“It is such a commedia dell’arte play,” she says, “It’s got big characters who are very bold and Petruchia is very much in the style of the Braggart.

The coarseness of the characterisations makes it the perfect play to set outdoors, with scenes in the marketplace and the countryside. The fun, Vickery says, will extend to the musical score and jig – a regular Lakespeare tradition – composed by Paris Scharkie, and the colourful costumes designed by Helen Wojtas.

So it’s time to take a deep breath, warn the kids of strange goings-on to come, and head for The Taming of the Shrew.

Shakespeare by the Lakes VII: The Taming of the Shrew, various locations, February 17-March 1. Details here.