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Click here to watch WMFE-TV The Arts Connection's coverage of Kiss Me, Kate, our 20th Anniversary, and Shakespeare with Heart!
Sponsored by:
The Prast Family, The Ginsburg Family Foundation, John & Rita Lowndes and Garritt & Debbi Toohey in honor of their 25th Wedding Anniversaries
By Samuel and Bella Spewack
Music and lyrics by Cole Porter
Love, comedy and confusion thrive behind the scenes of a Broadway-bound musical version of The Taming of the Shrew in Cole Porter’s musical masterpiece. Quarrelling couples swat and swoon as they navigate through the satiric, witty, and sensual score featuring such classics as “Too Darn Hot,” “So in Love” and “Brush Up Your Shakespeare!” Featuring local singing talent Michael Andrew.
If the cast of Saturday Night Live ever performed William Shakespeare’s “Taming of the Shrew”, the result might look a lot like the Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s current production of “Kiss Me, Kate”. With humor bordering on the ridiculous, this musical comedy uses every trick in the book to get laughs.
While this is not my favorite Orlando Shakespeare Theater production (see Macbeth), I can happily say that “Kiss Me, Kate” is a whole lot of fun and shouldn’t be missed.
Some of my favorites scenes are the solo musical numbers, including Jean Tafler’s performance of “I Hate Men”, Steven Patterson’s “Where Is The Life That Late I Led?” and Dana Barathy’s “Always True To You (In My Fashion)”, the latter of which gets up-close and personal with the audience.
The best performances, however, are reserved for a couple of very different duets.
Tafler, who plays the role of Lilli (and the role of Katherine in this “play within a play”), joins Patterson, as Lilli’s ex-husband Fred (Petruchio), in “Wunderbar”, a charming song that remembers their past love and the good times gone by. Void of any slapsick or wild humor, it’s a performance unlike any other in the show. It’s the point at which I found myself interested in the characters and believing that there just might be a story behind all the fun.
On the flip side, Bob Dolan and Brandon Roberts - playing the role of gangsters - take their bow near the end of the production with a musical tribute to the works of The Bard in, “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.” This hilariously smart number typifies the mixture of song, dance and overall goofiness that this production leans on for entertainment. The words of the song remind us that a little “woo” goes a long way, especially when you throw in a few lines of Shakespeare.
If I had to pick my favorite, though, it would have to be “Wunderbar”.
If you’ve never been to the Orlando Shakespeare Theater, “Kiss Me, Kate” makes for an excellent first-time visit. The naturally relaxed atmosphere of the theater, combined with this enjoyable musical comedy will put anyone in a good mood. It’s the perfect balance to all of the “scary” events going on around Orlando at this time of year.
"This Cole Porter musical shines with upbeat production numbers, energetic performances and fresh style...full-throttled and fun."
Just as the Bard looked for the bawdy in his tales of time and love out of joint, so too, the Orlando Shakespeare Theatre mines ribaldry and unabashed entertainment from an American musical theater classic, “Kiss Me Kate.”
Directed by Patrick Flick, who has become the go-to guy for successful season openers (“A Little Night Music,” “Into the Woods”), this Cole Porter musical shines with upbeat production numbers, energetic performances and fresh style.
Given the venue, it has to be fresh. Rather than the traditional proscenium theater, the classic musical is set on a thrust-stage with the audience on three sides. With the 60-year-old libretto’s big, frothy musical numbers and dated albeit festive material (gleeful intimidation of women) an audience needs a bit more aesthetic distance to embrace the story and characters.
More modern shows, like “Night Music” and “Into the Woods,” have as much emphasis on character development and theme as they do production numbers. They can take this thrust stage and still maintain audience involvement with the characters and their stories.
Here, though, the closer the characters get to you, the more two-dimensional they become. Therefore, with “Kiss Me Kate,” Flick goes wisely for an unbridled, in-your-lap presentational style. The show turns cabaret-like with flat, forced perspective scenery sliding on and off, an on-stage orchestra and actors interacting with the audience.
In all, there is a lot of showbiz fun and plenty of pep. It has some of the most recognizable songs from the American musical theater genre, including “Another Op’nin’ Another Show,” “So in Love,” “Too Darn Hot,” “Wunderbar,” “Always True to You in My Fashion” and “From this Moment On.”
The musical, Cole Porter’s most successful, received five Tony Awards in 1949, including best composer/lyricist and best musical. It won five Tonys, including best revival, in the popular 2000 Broadway revival. The 1953 movie was nominated for an Oscar for best music.
Written by Sam and Bella Spewak, “Kiss Me Kate” concerns a theater company opening their production of Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” at a pre-Broadway tryout in Baltimore. In the Shakespearean comedy, an appealing young woman, Bianca, wants to wed Lucentio. But first, her father must find a mate for his oldest daughter, cantankerous Katherine. Petruchio comes to town and, wanting to score a big dowry, sets his sights on taming and marrying Katherine.
The same nails-down-a-blackboard-non-feminist theme pervades the offstage cast: Director Fred Graham and actress Lilli Vanessi (who play Petruchio and Katherine); and the ingenue Lois Lane and Bill Calhoun (who play Bianca and Lucentio). A fun twist is added when a couple of thugs join the troupe to make sure an IOU is paid.
The versatile Steven Patterson sings, cracks repartee, double takes and winks his way through the dual roles of Fred Graham/Petruchio. This big talent has quite a range. He also brought to compelling life the monster in the one-man show “Frankenstein: The Modern Prometheus” in 2006.
Jean Tafler, known for her witty and sophisticated comic performances in other OST productions including Titania in the 2005 “Midsummer Nights’ Dream,” does the same with her role of the long-suffering and quick to anger Lilli Vanessi/Katherine.
Dana Barathy (Lois/Bianca) has some fun moments. And one of Orlando’s favorite swing singers, Michael Andrew, is rather wasted in his role of Bill/Lucentio.
Musically, it is Andrew Cao (Paul) who really heats up the production numbers with his all-singing, all-dancing and sexy performance in “Too Darn Hot.” And the very funny duo of Bob Dolan and Brandon Roberts as the thugs give some great visual gags and perform one of the show’s hallmark numbers, “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.”
Really, this show is about production numbers. They are full-throttled and fun. Given the proximity, you’ll almost feel like you’re on stage with the cast. You’ll be hard pressed to keep those toes from tapping.
I caught the classic musical comedy "Kiss Me Kate" at Orlando Shakespeare Theater during the weekend. It's a colorful, crisp production, with great star turns by Steven Patterson and Jean Tafler and a featured role by Swingerhead's talented crooner, Michael Andrew. His counterpart, Dana Barathy as the daffy sexpot Lois, is a head-turning hoot, too.
The play-within-a-play, written by Samuel and Bella Spewack with music by Cole Porter, follows a musical version of "Taming of the Shrew" and the funny squabbling of its stars. Its songs include such classics as "Too Darn Hot" and "Brush Up Your Shakespeare!" The gangsters who sing the latter nearly steal the show.
"The Orlando Shakespeare Theater company, under the stage direction of Patrick Flick and the musical direction of Charles Johnson, serves the show admirably, tearing into Porter's jazzy tunes with aplomb and giving its comic moments their due."
SMOOCHIN' THE SHREW
Orlando Shakes starts season with sweet love
Full disclosure: I performed in Kiss Me, Kate some years ago in my high school’s senior-year musical. I didn’t get the lead. Drat! But our director gave me lots of chorus work. Years later, I performed the show’s principal tunes in several Cole Porter revues. So the melodies have been spinning around my head for decades, and I have been known to break out into refrain. Before entering the Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s current production, my wife cautioned me, “No singing along.” Drat, again!
Musical theater fans consider the 1948 opus, with book by Sam and Bella Spewack and music and lyrics by Cole Porter, to be one of Broadway’s greatest treasures. The original production, starring Alfred Drake as Fred Graham (the egocentric producer, director and ham actor) and Patricia Morison, as Lilli Vanessi (the tempestuous leading lady), ran for more than a thousand performances and was the first Broadway cast recording to be released on a long-playing vinyl disc. An MGM movie version in 1953 paired Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson, and a well-regarded 1999 Broadway revival starring Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie became a multiple Tony Award–winner.
The show’s plot is designed around a play within a play. Fred’s theater troupe is staging a musical version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, and as the story unfolds, we learn that the backstage lives of its main characters mirror their onstage personas. Fred/Petruchio and Lilli/Kate are warring spouses, and Bill/Lucentio and Lois/Bianca are a pair of flirtatious and misbehaving second bananas. But the yarn is largely secondary to Porter’s sometimes-jaunty, sometimes-lyric score, as well as his propensity for the most outrageously erudite verses. Who else would have had the audacity to rhyme “puberty” with “Schuberty,” or “Sanka” with “Bianca”?
The Orlando Shakespeare Theater company, under the stage direction of Patrick Flick and the musical direction of Charles Johnson, serves the show admirably, tearing into Porter’s jazzy tunes with aplomb and giving its comic moments their due. Steven Patterson cuts a fine figure as the put-upon Fred, who must guide his thespian charges through opening night while keeping Lilli from walking out of the show mid-act. Patterson doesn’t have quite the mellifluous baritone called for in the part, but still manages to sell his numbers via his superior acting chops. Jean Tafler is a more accomplished vocalist and, as Lilli, comes closer to the true Porter prototype.
Dana Baráthy, as Lois, scores in the show-stopper “Always True to You in My Fashion,” and Bob Dolan and Brandon Roberts do their Damon Runyon–like best as the gangsters hired to squeeze Fred into paying a gambling debt he doesn’t actually owe. Special mention must go to Andrew Cao, who brings the second act alive with his energetic performance in choreographer Lea Andrew’s most lively dance number, “Too Darn Hot.”
Though not a perfect rendition of the beloved musical – occasionally the principals lack the emotional commitment that the love stories require, and the production numbers, while adequate, do not always bring down the house – OST’s season-opening foray into the Porter oeuvre is welcome and appealing. And it is so much better than my school memories. Drat, yet again!
