GEMMA SIBTHORPE

MY REVIEW

On the 27^th of February, the musical theatre department of South Essex College went to see a matinee performance of ‘Kiss me Kate.’ I had previously seen the show in college once before, so I knew what the show was about and what to roughly expect.

I felt the opening number was very captivating, it was lively, bright, colourful, and the music was very feel good.

Because the opening number was good it  meant that the audience wanted to see more, which is what an opening number should do; draw you in ready for the show.

The entire cast was very strong, especially the characters Lilli Vanessi (Katharine), Fred Graham (Pertruchio) and Hattie. These were the particular characters that stood out for me, I felt that Lilli Vanessi, played by Hannah Waddingham, was perfect and it was made clear in her version of ‘I hate men.’ I felt that she played this role brilliantly especially in this song, she showed very good change of character, so you could tell when she was playing Lilli Vanessi and when she was playing Katherine. Although she becomes a little bit of Lilli Vanessi when she is playing Katharine in ‘The Shrew’ you could still see a clear difference, this also went for the character Fred Graham, played by Alex Bourne, he also showed the clear difference between his two characters.

I felt that the character Hattie, played by Wendy Mae Brown, was the comical piece to the show and even though she was a smaller role when she had parts and lines she was what made a large portion of the audience laugh.

I felt the lighting in the show was fantastic. The lighting changed from backstage to the show ‘the shrew’ it was very clear when they were in their dressing room and when they were playing their characters in the performance. Also the lighting, when backstage, was almost showing a performance in the background, when the characters were backstage in the background it looked like a show was going on, which I felt was very effective.

Another good thing about the lighting was when they were in the performance ‘the shrew’ when Lilli Vanessi finds out the flowers and card weren’t for her during the performance and starts acting up the lighting helped make this look like everything was going wrong. Because obviously in s show you would have set lighting when the character Katharine was not in the place she was meant to be the lighting was where she should’ve been, a very effective way to show the audience it was not going to plan.

I thought the scenery that was all the sheets was very effective, they way the cast itself would pull the scenery out and back again I thought was good because It took away the break in between scenes, normally you would have a short break looking at a blackout whereas in this show you didn’t you watched the cast pulling out the stage, because ‘kiss me Kate’ is a show in a show, and you see backstage this was a very good effect.

Overall I enjoyed the performance and thought the entire show had some very positive points, I’m very glad I went to see the show, but don’t think I would necessarily rush down to see it again, as although there were some brilliant things, I felt it wasn’t as eye catching as some other musicals in the west end at the moment and I think ‘kiss me Kate’ only appeals to a small range of people.