CHLOE LOUISE NYMAN

MY REVIEW 

Kiss Me, Kate is a musical which Cole Porter wrote the music and lyrics for. The musical was written in the 1940’s and is about a cast of actors and actresses putting on the musical version of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ by William Shakespeare, as well as a growing conflict between the director/producer/leading male Fred Graham and his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi. Another topic of the show is a romance between the actress playing Bianca – Lois Lane – and her gambling boyfriend Bill, who gets into some trouble with a couple of gangsters.

At the beginning of each act, before the scenes started, the cast would slowly filter on in character doing things such as setting up for their musical, cleaning, chatting etc. I believe this was really effective because it enables the audience to see that the show is about to (re)start instead of them possibly being shocked by the sudden start and possibly missing a little bit. Also, by the cast coming on beforehand, the audience get to have an idea of what may be happening at their theatre before scenes.

Each character had a different costume to everyone else. Costume can help to signify status and characteristics throughout performances. Lois was wearing a tight blue playsuit. Blue is a rich and bubbly colour to show she is an important as well as fun character, the playsuit also shows that she is young as you would not see an older woman wearing this. Lilli was wearing a white fur scarf and held a cigarette. You can tell by this that she is rich as she can afford fur clothing and cigarettes.

You could also tell what sort of era ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ was set in because of their costumes. The girls had long curly wigs and everyone had tudor looking costumes. Also, as they were in these costumes you could tell when they were doing their performance and when they were not.

Honestly, I felt as if the first act went on for too long and the second went really fast. There wasn’t much dialogue in the scenes and what dialogue there was could be slightly confusing at times. When Lilli Vanessi was on stage I think that the performance improved, she stood out from all the other girls not just because of the age gap but because of how much energy she brought to the performance. She also brought comedy to the scenes when Lilli came out of character as Kate because she was angry at her ex husband. The fact that everyone had to improvise as Lilli wasn’t saying what she was supposed to made the whole audience laugh.

I like how they used cloth that was held up my movable poles to create scenery such as houses and trees for ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ as it showed the difference between the ‘Kiss Me Kate’ set and their musical’s set.

I didn’t know who Kate was until quite a way through the play when Fred sung ‘Kiss Me Kate’ to Lilli, it was then I realised her character in their musical was called Kate. I think that they should have made this clear considering that the musical is called Kiss Me Kate therefore I was disappointed in this instance.