Kiss me quick
Kiss Me Kate
O’Reilly Theatre, 15th - 19th November
Production: 5/5
Cast: 4/5
Direction: 5/5
Great tunes and witty lyrics make Kiss me, Kate one of Cole Porter’s best loved musicals. It tells the story of a production of The Taming of the Shrew, contrasting an ‘onstage’ musical production of the Shakespeare play with the stormy ‘offstage’ lives of its players. Fred Graham (Tom Rogers) has cast his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi (Poppy Burton-Morgan) as Kate • and his current love interest Lois Lane (Grace Ang-Lygate) as Bianca.
Fred’s onstage efforts as Petruccio to tame Lilli’s Kate are hampered by their backstage bickerings. To complicate matters, Lois’ lover Bill Calhoun (Cristopher Brown) has wracked up a gambling debt in Fred’s name, and now some gangsters want to collect on it. All these backstage tensions spill out into the musical-within- a-musical, with amusing results that blur the boundaries between the onstage and the offstage world. Altogether, Kiss me, Kate is extremely well staged.
The big chorus numbers are the most successful • the choreography is slick, entertaining and frequently hilarious. Every member of the cast gives an individual performance, there is always plenty of action, and yet the space never feels cluttered. This is helped by the fact that the stage is built on many levels, which are used to the utmost effect, creating different focal points for the audience’s attention. Several individual performances are striking.
As Kate, Poppy Burton-Morgan gives an excellent performance of I Hate Men. Sometimes, however, she seems a little girlish in her role as the ten-years divorced Lilli, and her rendition of So In Love is perhaps not as dynamic as one might have expected. The chemistry between her and Tom Rogers also tends to work better when they are in role as Kate and Petruccio. Tom has a fine voice, although when singing tends to sound more like an Oxford student than an American theatre impresario.
However, the physical interaction between the two creates some of the funniest moments of the performance. The strongest performance is given by Grace Ang-Lygate as Lois, her singing is flawless and she pouts and flounces beautifully as Bianca. Cristopher Brown as her lover Bill Calhoun, lacks vocal projection both when speaking and singing, and has a tendency to lose his American accent.
Amongst the more minor roles, the two gangsters played by John Gethin and Alex Hodgeson are worthy of note; their lines arre amongst the funniest, and are well delivered.
10th Nov 2005