On the 27th of February, Trevor Nunn’s production
of Kiss Me Kate at the Old Vic Theatre won me over with its modern yet old
fashioned take on such a classic musical. Before seeing the show I wasn’t as
enthusiastic about seeing it as I should have been because it wasn’t a show I
have looked into before therefore I didn’t know much about it. However this
musical definitely proves ‘never judge a book by its cover’ as it totally won
me over. To start with I thought the
casting was fantastic, Alex Bourne as Fred Graham/Petruchio was great casting
he brought an arrogance to the role which made every audience member fall in
love with him through his comic lines to his sometimes loving nature. When he
was playing both his characters you could see the difference between the two
but you could still see that the love mess between him and Lilli Vanessi was
hot on his mind. I am a big fan of Adam Garcia I think his such a great
performer however I didn’t understand why he was dancing to a click track, I’m
hoping this was more for the chorus than him as he is a phenomenal tapper.
However putting the click track to one side, what he was doing on stage was
amazing and to be able to witness such talent really helped me to enjoy the
musical a lot more. He looked quite smug through his tap number which I feel
like was part of his character as I met him afterwards and he is lovely, so in
the case of changing from himself to a different character I feel like he did
this very well. Two other characters that stood out for me was the two
gangsters, first man played by David Burt and second man played by Clive Rowe.
I thought these two characters were a breath of fresh air to the musical,
especially their song ‘brush up your Shakespeare’, I don’t think I have laughed
so much at one song before, these two brilliant performers really made the
parts their own and did a fantastic job. However performance of the show has to
go to Hannah Waddington as Lilli Vanessi when she sang ‘I Hate Men’ I thought
this was funny, yet sincere and I think every woman in the audience agreed with
some part of that song or have done in moments of their life. Even though in
this song she was playing her Shakespeare character Kate, you could tell she
was singing it as Lilli but still stayed in character of her part at all times,
and I applaud that.
I thought the set was very clever and the way that the
scenery for the Shakespeare scenes popped out of the ground onto poles in the
air but it was done through dance so it didn’t look out of place or random at
all. I also liked the fact that when scenes were going on back stage you could
see a light at the back of the stage with people moving around in the shadows
to make it look like the show was still going on, on stage, which was very
clever.
Over all I thought everything about the show was fantastic
my only critisisum would be that the Shakespeare could have been slowed down
slightly because sometimes I got lost on what was happening and why people were
laughing, but apart from that I would recommend everyone I know to go and see
the show.
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