ELENA CLARKE

MY REVIEW


Kiss Me Kate is a musical with the music and lyrics by Cole Porter and the book by Sam and Bella Spewack, which was show at The Old Vic Theatre and directed by Trevor Nun.

The story is based around Shakespeare's The Taming Of The Shrew and the disagreement on and off stage between the two principal characters Fred Graham (Petruchio) who plays the director and producer of the Taming of The Shrew in the performance, played by Alex Bourne and Lilli Vanessi (Katherine), Fred's ex wife played by Hannah Waddingham.

Another romance in the musical involves Lois Lane (Bianca) played by Holly Dale Spencer and her boyfriend Bill Calhoun (Lucentio) played by Adam Garcia. Bill is a gambler and gets himself in money problems with two gangsters.

A play within a play structure is very engaging and Shakespeare used this dramatic device especially in his works of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labours Lost and Hamlet so I really enjoyed the way this was incorporated into the musical.

Robert Jones (set designer) design was very smart and I liked the way the set was moved around, to show whether the actors were on stage or off stage. The use of lighting helped show this as well which I found very useful because at times the story would get a little hard to understand. In 'The Taming Of The Shrew" I loved how the set would inflate from the floor like a pop up book, it had a great impact on the audience. The costumes were also outstanding and massively helped the performance gel together as it was another way of flicking from play to play.

I loved the performance and thought it was beautifully executed and that all the characters were believable and their performances were all very strong. Hannah Waddingham and Alex Bourne both shared fabulous voices and excel in their roles and I felt a particularly strong scene for them was where Lilli expresses her emotion through the character of Katherine by appealing to her own aggressive feelings toward Fred.

"Another Opening, Another Show" opened the performance and was very promising, however I felt the actual storyline was weak and this did have an impact slightly on the energy of the performance.

I felt it was a little tedious when they were acting in The Taming Of The Shrew, this could have been avoided by cutting down the running time of the first act or pacing the performance differently. On the other hand the second act opened with a jazzy musical number of "Too Darn Hot" led by Jason Pennycooke which was engaging to watch and lifted the nergy, creating a brilliant atmosphere which brought the whole performance back together. Choreographer Robert Jones made this number shine.

I also enjoyed watching the comedy duo gangsters Clive Rowe and David Burt's rendition of " Brush Up Your Shakespeare". I thought it was entertaining but could have been more so with some extra dance.