Kiss Me Kate at the London Coliseum. Picture: Tristram Kenton
Kiss Me, Kate continues at the London Coliseum until 30 June 2018, then on international tour until January 2019.
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
It’s just one musical treasure after another as the Cole Porter 70-year-old classic, joyfully revived by Opera North, comes to London on a short run before going on to Edinburgh, Japan and Germany.
Porter was at the height of his genius when he wrote the score to Bella and Samuel Spewack’s saucy book and it’s as fresh today as it was when the curtain first went up on 1,077 performances on Broadway in 1948.
If you don’t enjoy timeless tunes like ‘Another Op’nin Another Show’, ‘Wunderbar’, ‘So in Love’ (beautifully done by the operatic Stephanie Corley), the all-action ‘I Hate Men’ (Corley again), ‘Too Darn Hot’, ‘Always True to You In My Fashion’ and the show-stopping ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’, you must have walked into the wrong theatre.
My MTR colleague Mike Tilling gave this hilarious take on The Taming of the Shrew a big thumbs-up when the show opened in Leeds a month ago and it is hard to argue with his five stars.
Maybe Act I was a tad slow but a marvellous Act II banishes any negative thoughts. And ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’ with its outrageous puns and rhymes (“If she says your behaviour is heinous/Kick her right in the Coriolanus”) is a work of genius.
As Gunman 1 and Gunman 2, Joseph Shovelton and John Savournin, the long and the short of it a la Laurel and Hardy, milk every moment with reprise and after reprise.
The audience loved it as they did Alan Burkitt, one of the world’s grandmasters of tap, who dances up a storm in a dizzily inventive routine that alone is worth the price of a ticket.
Dutch baritone Quirijn de Lang and the striking Corley look dashing and sing thrillingly as the leads Fred Graham, director, producer and star of Shrew, and his impossible-to-live-with diva ex-wife Lilli Vanessi whom he has cast as the violent Kate.
The out-of-town launch in a dreary Baltimore theatre is the scene for this battle of the sexes which also spawns a second tempestuous backstage romance.
This is between feckless gambler Bill Calhoun (Burkitt) and second-lead actress Lois Lane (Zoe Rainey, impressive in her big solo ‘Always True to You in My Fashion’) whose one-time admirer Harrison Howell (Malcolm Ridley) is now chasing Lilli and turns up to claim her.
He leaves empty-handed as Lilli gets back with Fred, her ex, Bill forgives Lois for her affairs and it’s all sweetness and light at the end and happy ever after.
Playing Graham’s assistant Paul, Stephane Anelli stands out with his vibrant dancing in ‘Too Darn Hot’ and the whole choreography (by Will Tuckett/David James Hulston) is flamboyantly achieved.
Director Jo Davies and revival director Ed Goggin take no liberties in this traditional version, while set and costumes are in the safe hands of Colin Richmond.
No gimmicks here, no updating it, no tampering with a gorgeously rich show which the massive Opera North orchestra and chorus under James Holmes’ baton have a ball with. The ensemble pieces fill the eye and the vast spaces of the Coliseum stage with glorious colour.
This a seriously funny show as it stands and Opera North is to be congratulated on leaving well alone.
Jeremy Chapman
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