©The News-Times
May 6, 1994

A Spry 'Kate' At Goodspeed
By: Chesley Plemmons

It’s a bonny Kate they’ve got in East Haddam: The Goodspeed Operas
House's season opener, a striking revival of Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate.

This wonderful collaboration between Porter and playwrights Sam and
Bella Spewack – with help from William Shakespeare – shows no signs
of aging. Ted Pappas has directed with the same energizing skill
that breathed enormous life into last season’s “Promises, Promises”.

The Spewacks provided Porter with a fortunate setting for his musical,
the theater itself. The rousing opening number, ”Another Opening,
Another Show”, has almost become a theater anthem.

Kate, a cleverly conceived show within a show, centers on a pair
of divorced actors who are co-starring in the Baltimore tryout of a
musical version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.

The feuding stars, Fred Graham (Steve Barton) and Lilli Vanessi
(Marilyn Caskey) are mirrored onstage in the characters they play on
Shrew, Petruchio and Kate. The story alternates between
backstage squabbling to an onstage slugfest.

Recognized as Porter’s masterpiece, the score adroitly changes style
as the story switches from Fred and Lilli’s romantic battles to
Petruchio’s wooing of the ill-tempered Kate. The contemporary side of
Kate includes the well known “So In Love” and “Why Can’t You Behave?”.

The music for the onstage Shrew is reminiscent of Italian dance,
in particular the tarantella, and the Venetian boat song. Porter’s
witty lyrics are wed to Shakespeare’s plot as smoothly as Petruchio’s
taming of the hotheaded Kate.

Those who enjoy Porter’s frequently risqué lyrics will not be disappointed
here. His clever use of rhyme is also on display, perhaps only Sondheim
would also think to pair “Padua” with “a cad you are”.

A secondary backstage romance involving Lois Lane (Leah Hocking), who plays
Bianca in Shrew,and Bill Calhoun (Michael Gruber),who plays Lucentio,
was clearly devised as an opportunity for some high-powered and often torrid
choreography by Liza Gennaro.

Gruber is an exciting dancer who turns “Too Darn Hot” into a showstopper.
Hocking is fine as Bianca, and her dancing matches Gruber’s for sheer
pizzazz. But Pappas has allowed her to play the Lois Lane part as a Kewpie
doll, which doesn’t match the surrounding sophistication.

One of the joys of seeing Kate again is that its score retains
its freshness. The songs from South Pacific, which opened a few
weeks after Kate have been played to death in the 40 years since
the nearly joint debuts of the two shows.

In Pacific every song could stand on its own, apart from the book,
and thus entered into the mainstream of popular music. Most of Kate’s
score, written to fit the demands of the Shrew’s story, didn’t
translate so easily to the Hit Parade.

No less delightful than the songs from South Pacific, if less
well known, are “Were Thine That Special Face” “We Open In Venice” and
“I’ve Come To Wive It Wealthily In Padua”.

In addition to a spirited sense of comedy, Barton and Caskey both bring
exceptional voices to their roles. Barton, who had the misfortune to
inherit the lead in the ill-fated New York production of The Red
Shoes, proves a commanding Petruchio. His rich baritone fits the
songs like a velvet glove and he turns “Where Is The Life That
Late I Had Led” into a hilarious ode to lost bachelorhood.

Caskey matches him in the comedy department and reveals a romantic
soprano of operatic caliber.

For some the success of Kate has always been assured with “Brush
Up Your Shakespeare”, a paean to the Bard delivered vaudeville style
by two stage-struck gangsters. Mark Lotito and Kevin McClarnon easily
steal the show in this single number.

Scenery by James Noone is right on the money: a bare backstage balanced
with the imaginative courts and gardens of Italy. Michael Krass has devised a
Technicolor delight in the costumes, which are as beautiful as they are witty.

Goodspeed seldom stumbles with revivals, and this staging of Kiss Me,
Kate will be pleasing audiences right into summer. Like a fine Italian,
the musical improves with age.


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