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Goose me, Kate
Road-company Cole Porter at the Wang
BY LLOYD SCHWARTZ

Kiss Me, Kate
Music and lyrics by Cole Porter. Book by Sam and Bella Spewack. Directed by Michael Blakemore. Choreography by Kathleen Marshall. Music direction by Paul Gemignani. Sets by Robin Wagner. Costumes by Martin Pakledinaz. Lighting by Peter Kaczorowski. Sound design by Tony Meola. With Rex Smith and Rachel York. At the Wang Theatre through June 2.


Kiss Me, Kate was Cole Porter’s most successful show. It opened in 1948 and ran for 1077 performances, winning five Tony awards. The delightful 1958 movie version (in 3-D!) had a fine cast (Howard Keel, Kathryn Grayson, Ann Miller) and cleaned-up lyrics ( " According to the latest report " is the Hays Office version of " According to the Kinsey report " in " Too Darn Hot " ). But for half a century Kate never got a major Broadway revival. Apparently the estate that controls the script didn’t want it fiddled with or updated.

The 1999 revival (with uncredited rewrites by John Guare) was a hit, garnering five more Tonys, including one for director Michael Blakemore, who also won a Tony that year for directing Copenhagen. The road company of that production has now arrived in Boston for a week at the Wang Theatre.

The plot is both simple and complex. A musical version of The Taming of the Shrew is having its out-of-town tryout in Baltimore. The stars of the show are divorced — still angry and still in love. We see why they split: she has a violent temper; he’s an egomaniac. But we also know they are made for — and deserve — each other. Witty parallels are drawn between the couple and the Shakespeare characters they’re playing.

The special joy of the show is its endless stream of songs that are now standards: " Another Op’nin’, Another Show, " " Wunderbar, " " So in Love, " and Porter’s specialty numbers, which have some of his most dazzling, literate, and suggestive wordplay:

Mister Harris, plutocrat,

Wants to give my cheek a pat.

If the Harris pat

Means a Paris hat — Bebé!

Or:

Where is Fedora, the wild virago?

It’s lucky I missed her gangster sister from Chicago.

Or, from " Brush Up Your Shakespeare " :

Just recite an occasional sonnet

And your lap will have " Honey " upon it.

Several performers in the show are good at these, especially Richard Poe and Michael Arkin as the two thugs who want to see the show go on so they can collect an IOU — and who happen to love Shakespeare. And though blonde dancer Jenny Hill, as Bianca, substitutes uninhibited libido for innuendo, she certainly gets across the words to " Always True to You in My Fashion. " Randy Donaldson, in a minor role, is not a good singer, but at the beginning of the second act he led a sizzling production number of " Too Darn Hot " that finally blew the roof off the theater.

One of the two serious problems with this production is that it’s directed with surprising coarseness. In the songs, some word in every line is hit so hard, it’s like an elbow in the ribs. And why so many crotch jokes in a show that should be the epitome of sophisticated style? Rachel York and Rex Smith, as the feuding exes, seem so thoroughly dislikable, it’s hard to care about them. York, who has a lovely voice, and stage presence, has to shriek and cackle and growl. Smith, who hasn’t much of a voice (in a role that needs one), resorts to a kind of talk-shouting. His ego should seem earned (these characters are evidently parodies of the Lunts), but Smith seems merely weasely. Opening (preview) night, his timing was quite off.

And conductor Paul Gemignani, a Broadway legend for leading the original versions of Sondheim shows, races through numbers that need to throb with feeling or implication. When Lilli Vanessi and Fred Graham reminisce about a terrible show they were once in and then burst into " Wunderbar, " Porter’s delicious operetta parody, their affection for their own past, for the song, and for each other should be transparent. It isn’t — partly because Gemignani doesn’t let it breathe. " From This Moment On " is interpolated from another show, as it is for a marvelous dance number in the movie, but here it’s so irrelevant and badly staged, you’re apt to resent it.

This is probably one of the most slickly professional musical productions we’ve seen in Boston in some time. The sets — both the vivid " backstage " and the Italian Renaissance flats and backdrops for The Taming of the Shrew — are elegant and witty, as are the colorful costumes. The orchestra is terrific. The choreography a delight. Almost all the secondary roles are played with confidence and skill. But the slyness that you hear from Alfred Drake, Patricia Morrison, and Lisa Kirk on the original-cast album, and that even makes its way into the movie, is lost in a production that doesn’t trust its own virtues.

Issue Date: May 30-June 6, 2002
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