Kiss Me Kate is a musical with words and music by Cole Porter. Prior writing to this, Porter had had tremendous success with Gay Divorcee, Fifty Million Frenchmen, and most notably Anything Goes. In 1937 Porter had an equestrian accident that left him in constant pain. He eventually returned to composition but with only limited success. Hard to write cheery, breezy musicals through pain.
With the success of so-called integrated musicals like Oklahoma, where the songs were integrated into the story, Porter turned to the best story writer in the business, Shakespeare, and used the plot of The Taming of the Shrew and turned it into his most successful musical, Kiss Me Kate, winning for himself and the show the first Tony for Best Musical in 1949.
The original production starred Alfred Drake (who was an experienced Shakespearean actor), Patricia Morrison, Lisa Kirk, and Harold Lang. Since then there have been four television versions, one movie, and a very successful revival on Broadway in 1999 which was later put on film in a high-definition version from London.
The English have embraced the show more than Americans, perhaps because of the tie-in to The Bard. American productions, except for the 1999 revival, which was directed by a Brit, have had a harder go of it. I think this is because productions might have great singers, but as actors they failed to bring the Shakespeare text to full fruition.
The current production at Reprise at U.C.L.A. has more success because director Michael Michetti has directed some Shakespeare before and the two leads, Leslie Margherita and Tom Hewitt, have had some experience with English sensibilities. What is tricky about the show is that the characters are definitely American but they are performing Shakespeare.
While both Hewitt (who was so delicious in the tour of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels) and Leslie Margherita, who performed brilliantly last week in La Mirada’s Little Shop of Horrors, had their moments, she in “I Hate Men” and he in the reprise of “So in Love,” for me they had no chemistry as a couple. The characters of Kate and Petruchio, like Romeo and Juliet, must have the audience rooting for them to get together. Here Margherita’s Kate was too earthbound, rather bitchy, and had no real class, while Hewitt was all class but little testosterone.
Article comments
1 - Bob Sledder
What play did you really see and review?
2 - bob smith
Hard to believe you saw the same play we saw!
3 - robert machray
I know many loved the show and I thought many aspects of the show were good, design, music, direction, I just thought the three leads were miscast.
4 - Kate Hankel
I have to say that I rather disagree on a few counts. First, I felt Hewitt lacked charm/class/what have you altogether; to me, it felt as though he was phoning in the performance. Conversely, I adored Ms. Margherita and felt that, while her Kate was very different than other Kate's I've seen, she was brilliant. I found the direction to be painful, at best. Lastly, I believe a lot of the audience HAD seen the production before... nevertheless, their blanket adoration of the production did puzzle me quite a bit.