LEANNE COLLARD

MY REVIEW

After hearing so many good comments about this show, I was excited to go and see Kiss Me Kate.

Many people had told me that it was a good musical to go and see. However, after seeing this performance, I have to disagree with this.

The first thing that caught my eye in the theatre was the set. Personally, I feel that the set was boring and plain and therefore at first impressions I was not impressed. When the actual show was starting, the house lights were still on, the audience were chatting and were not paying attention to the characters on stage. I feel that this was a very poor way to open the show.
Thus being that although nothing major was happening, the characters were just entering. I feel that the show was not clearly introduced due to this.

If I were to have been the director for this, I would have opened the show with the opening song "Another Opening", with a spotlight on the first character to sing then bring the rest of the cast and set in from a blackout. I would do this so that the audience clearly knew that the show was starting and I feel it would make an impact as it would be a dramatic start, due to the vivid spotlight, but then the mood would be lightened as the blackout was slowly drawn out.

Not only did I feel that the opening was not right, I feel that the way the actual show was set, the way it had been written was too confusing. The fact it was a play within a play can be very hard to address clearly and I feel it was not clearly performed. To support this, when changing back and forth from the inner story to the framing device, I feel it was not clearly expressed due to the story being hard to understand from the start.

However, on the contrary, what I did understand, I thought was a very clever concept. How the main theme throughout was a love hate relationship and expressing how even though two lovers may not always see eye to eye and face difficulty throughout their time together, that in the end, love conquers all. Also, I like the love triangle idea of how on one hand you have all the fun that you never experience with some people, yet on the other hand, there is all you ever wanted. I liked how this was portrayed within both plays and how they both suited the actual situation between the characters. I feel personally that to help enhance this, more special effects could have been used. For example, I feel the lighting was very plain and boring and for scenes where it was the two lovers, I would personally turn the lights down in the heart to heart romantic scenes to help set the mood. I feel as the moods were not clearly identified, it classes as a factor as to why I did not enjoy the performance.

As well as this, I also feel that the characters could be unprofessional at times throughout their stage time. I found this occurred with more than one performer, however I noticed it most with Adam Garcia, who regularly seemed to corpse from his character by looking as though he was not focused, was not enjoying it and overall frankly quite bored when he was not speaking. On the other hand this may have just been this character, but I feel the way his character was portrayed was not in such a way that looking around the stage (whilst others were watching what was happening) was acceptable. To further support this, I did not feel  the relaxed nature...

This is another element that made me lose interest. If the atmosphere given off by the performers is negative, and if they are acting as though they do not want to be there, then it makes the audience feel the same and this is the vibe I received. Therefore I did not enjoy it as much as I would have liked to.
On the other hand, the two main characters within this show played their characters very well and I loved how Hannah Waddingham had portrayed her character and how well she performed considering her moods were very unstable and had to jump from one mood to another. I feel personally she was the most outstanding character within the show. Also I loved how Alex Bourne devised his character. His character remained calm and collected throughout, even in the most confronting situations, for example with the gangsters, yet he rarely lost his temper. I feel this was effective as it added layers to the performance and made it more diverse as there seemed to be a lot of tension between his character and that of Hannah. Therefore his character was the "peace keeper".

Despite all of this, I still personally did not enjoy the performance. I feel that the storyline was not clear and the moods throughout were not made evident, therefore leaving the audience perplexed as to how they were to feel about the certain scene. I also feel that it was not made exciting enough, the use of props was different as to how they created scenes through the white cloth, however, for me I was not intrigued.

In my opinion, this show did not leave me with that "wow" factor feeling, nor did the music within the show or the actual performance. Due to this, I would not recommend it to anyone as I feel it is not worth spending money to go and see to be confused throughout and unamused. Yet saying this, personally this was not my kind of musical. I am not enthusiastic about Shakespeare as I do not understand the language therefore do not enjoy it, however I loved the storyline.

This performance was different and an OK show,  I personally would not go and see it again as to me it did not fulfill my expectations and I was disappointed by the overall show.