The shrieks of Katherina, the shrew of Padua, will awaken anyone trying to sleep it off on a Lake Eola Park bench. The heroine of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew never speaks quietly when a scream will do, and her lung power is matched by her nimble footwork and her skill with a fist.

Every moment of The Taming of the Shrew, the first production of the Orlando Shakespeare Festival's debut season, lives up to the irrepressible Katherina. Director Sara Daspin has created a hilariously exaggerated Taming of the Shrew, and one with so much energy that it sends off sparks in the cold night air.

The festival, which is performing its three-week season at the new amphitheater in Lake Eola Park, made a popular choice but not an easy one in selecting The Taming of the Shrew, one of Shakespeare's earliest works. With its broad, earthy comedy, the play has always been a crowd pleaser. Still, the usual interpretation of the plot - which shows the headstrong Katherina ''tamed'' by her new husband, Petruchio - has often antagonized modern audiences. During such a production, forward-thinking women often feel they would like to wring Petruchio's neck.

But no one should be inclined to indulge in man-bashing during Daspin's production, because this director takes a different tack. Her Kate and her Petruchio are cut from the same outrageous cloth, and the taming is, in effect, a masquerade - an act of make-believe performed for a society that doesn't understand.

Practically everyone in Padua wants Katherina to marry except Katherina, who has never met a man who is her match. Her father is an ineffectual rich man named Baptista Minola, who won't allow a marriage for his beautiful younger daughter Bianca until the older Kate is wed. So Baptista is thrilled - as are all Bianca's suitors - when they come upon Petruchio, who has journeyed from Verona to search for a wealthy wife.

Petruchio isn't put off by Kate's bluster, and he decides to tame her the way he would his falcons, by withholding food and sleep. But she recognizes in him the same extravagant sensibility she sees in herself. In pretending to be tamed, she joins him in a union against a more conservative - and hypocritical - world.

That hypocrisy comes across immediately in Daspin's production, in which the supposedly sweet-tempered 

Daspin has filled her production with humor - Petruchio's acquaintances cross themselves every time he mentions his dear departed father's name - and with color, seen in both the sumptuous costumes and the warm lights. Her actors, too, are used to good effect, from the smallest roles on up. Alexander Oleksij makes a sweet, silly Baptista, a father that any self-respecting shrew would want to flee; Bruce Edward Barton is bright and able as Petruchio's trusted servant Grumio. Todd Patrick Breaugh is bold and crafty as another servant, Tranio, and Paul Wegman is wonderfully funny as a spry old suitor named Gremio.

Ronald Drewes finds in Petruchio a humanity not often seen on the stage - a hot-tempered man who is so fond of his servant that he doesn't know whether to belt him or kiss him, a man who admires Katherina for breaking a lute over her music teacher's head. Drewes' Petruchio sincerely believes he is right in trying to subdue his new wife. Yet when he sees her match him in outrageousness, this Petruchio loves her all the more.

And Tami Workentin makes Katherina a spitfire, a woman whose feistiness is just part of her smarts. Kate always goes overboard: She screams into an old man's ear trumpet, and when Petruchio forces her to thank him for a scrap of meat, she throws herself to the ground and pretends to grovel like a dog. But this Kate is as wise as she is witty; she's a heroine apt to win every theatergoer's heart.

Director Daspin can't always make Shrew's intricate subplots as appealing as the story of Kate and Petruchio, and the amphitheater's iffy sound system sometimes makes the show hard to hear. But the vitality of Shakespeare's characters can communicate even without sound, and the wit of Daspin's production reaches out and enfolds the audience in a communal embrace. If this is the kind of Shakespeare that the Orlando Shakespeare Festival has in store for us, it deserves a long, happy and fruitful life.