KATIE GOODRICK

MY REVIEW


I personally didn't think that I would enjoy 'Kiss Me Kate' as I felt that it wouldn't be a show that I would pick to go and see. But I found the show very captivating and interesting.

The scenery for 'Kiss Me Kate' was very simple and only consisted of a very few props and on stage staging. The rest of the scenery was made from designed pieces of fabric such as trees, ceiling. I thought this was very good as it was the cast that would set it up as part of a choreographed dance so it added to the scenes.. I thought this was very creative and effective way of setting different scenes throughout the show. I also found that the split scenes between 'Lilli Vanessi' and 'Fred Graham' was set up well as you could tell they were separate dressing rooms, but I thought that the interaction they could have with each other freely was good.

The lighting for when Vanessi had just read the letter that wasn't supposed to be for her and then going back on stage to perform 'The Shrew' but their private life is mirrored in ' The Shrew' but I found it very comical when the spotlight would go where 'Vanessi' was staged to be but she refused to follow the spotlight and done her own thing. I also found it good that when they were backstage as you could see lights and shadows as if people were performing on stage and you could hear faintly noises of speech and clapping.

The costumes were great, not only did the costumes fit in with the era that 'The Shrew' was in, but the costumes that people wore when they were off stage were also very good as you could see the significant changes between era's. One costume in particular that I thought was very good, was that the girls in the chorus: their dresses had a coloured hem that matched their tights and laces on their shoes.

I thought Hannah Waddingham's version of ' I Hate Men' was fantastic, not only does she have an amazing range in the show, the characterisation was great. Her interaction with the audience was comical.

The choreography for ' Too Darn Hot' was great. Not only has Jason Pennycooke got a great voice, he is a very good dancer. Even though he did not have a lead role in the show he was still a memorable character through this song.

I wasn't overly impressed with Adam Garcia's performance as I think he could have put more into it as it just seemed as if he was marking it at sometimes during the performance. But in certain scenes when it was just him and Holly Dale Spencer on stage he worked with his character more and showed more characterisation. I was impressed with his tapping as I hadn't seen him tap before, yet finding out he was dancing to a click track was a bit dissapointing.

Holly Dale Spencer had good characterisation but I did find her annoying at times when she was playing ' Lois Lane' as I found she was over characterising the character with her facial expressions and I feel they were not needed. But I did like her playing ' Bianca' her characterisation and facial expressions for this character were good. I just didn't feel there was a change in character between 'Lois' and ' Bianca', where as with the other performers there was a difference in the two characters they were playing.

Overall I found the production very good, and I came out of 'Kiss Me Kate' knowing the storyline. I would go and see it again as I was impressed how they could make Shakespeare seem light and funny compared to heavy. I was impressed with the overall production. Would recommend to go and see it.