Ah, that pesky issue of sexism. It’s what’s relegated Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” to the pile of his most dated, inflexible works. His comic tale of putting women in their domestic place is a tough one to stage nowadays.

And yet here’s the Southwest Shakespeare Company and director Lisa Wolpe doing a solid production of “Shrew” without shrouding the methodical defeat of Kate in modern smirks of irony. The fix instead? A little sleight of hand: By amping up the play’s comedy to farcical proportions, audiences ignore any prickly sexism until its final moments, when Kate acquiesces to her husband.

When this “Shrew” works, it makes for some deliciously funny stuff. In the second act, Petruchio (played by soap opera actor and painter James Kiberd) rumbles with Kate (Maren Maclean) in a bedroom scene as venomously riotous as “The War of the Roses.”

Indeed, channeling some connection between Shakespeare and “The Three Stooges,” this play’s got more knocks to the crotch than an episode of “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” Sexism, take that.

And, thankfully in a season of Silly Putty-stretched Shakespeare adaptations, this one’s delivered classically in the Italian Renaissance.
Only, in this show, I didn’t quite get a sense of the true love between Petruchio and Katherina that Shakespeare makes available in his text. Here, I felt like theirs never rose above a relationship of convenience — he after her money, she after the first man who shows care.

Perhaps when you’re playing “Shrew” for laughs, that’s the best you can do.