Kiss Me, Kate – Roundabout Theatre Company’s Studio 54, New York

Kelli O’Hara and Will Chase in Kiss Me, Kate at Roundabout Theatre Company’s Studio 54, New York. Picture: Joan Marcus

Kiss Me, Kate continues at Roundabout Theatre Company’s Studio 54, New York until 30 June 2019.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Lightning can indeed strike twice.  It was just 20 years ago that Cole Porter’s masterwork Kiss Me, Kate enjoyed a memorable Broadway revival, directed by Michael Blakemore and starring Brian Stokes Mitchell and the late and sorely missed Marin Mazzie. It collected a raft of Tony Award nominations, winning four of them, including Best Musical Revival, and chalked up 881 performances and 29 previews, dropping its final curtain on 30 December 2001.

Now, the not-for-profit Roundabout Theatre Company has mounted a new Broadway redo, and in a word, it’s smashing. The production has gained some points for its conscientious effort to drain the show of its purported sexism (dating all the way back to its source material, Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew).

To that end, Amanda Green (daughter of Adolph Green of Comden and Green fame) contributed additional material, with her most notable contribution coming in the penultimate number, Kate’s ‘I Am Ashamed that Women Are So Simple’ now transformed to ‘I Am Ashamed That People Are So Simple’.

But beyond that is the production’s appreciation of Kiss Me, Kate as a knock-’em-dead entertainment, with its catalogue of one glorious Porter song after another, the buoyancy and shrewdness of the Sam and Bella Spewack book, and its opportunities to dazzle with production numbers, even when hardly related to the plot.

Director Scott Ellis, Roundabout’s associate artistic director, has deliciously heightened the book’s meta-theatricality, from the opening, with a ghost light illuminating an empty stage, to the closing, with the heroine Lilli Vanessi’s last lingering look as she exits the stage door.

It seals with a kiss the love letter to the theatre that underlies the entire proceedings, all the mayhem taking place during the opening tryout performance in 1948 Baltimore of a musical based on Shakespeare’s Shrew. Lilli is co-starring with its producer/director Fred Graham, who is also her ex-husband.

And it is Kelli O’Hara, as Lilli, that is the centerpiece of this return of Kiss Me, Kate, perhaps even its rationale. She brings to the character all the star power she has burnished in playing a series of iconic roles in seminal shows, from Pajama Game to South Pacific and The King and I.

She may not be the fiercest Kate ever to rattle the boards; she has an inherent sweetness that’s hard to eradicate. But it gives her Kate a seductive duality, a sense of glorified play-acting that falls right in line with director Ellis’ inspired concept. It also allows O’Hara to squeeze every bit of comedic juice out of ‘I Hate Men’. And her singing has never been more brilliant. Her ‘So in Love’ could well qualify Kiss Me, Kate for grand opera houses from New York to Milan.

Portraying Fred Graham/Petruchio, Broadway veteran Will Chase makes a perfectly pitched partner for the radiance of O’Hara. His light baritone doesn’t have the stentorian authority of some former Fred/Petruchios, but it reaches deep emotional profundity in his reprise of ‘So in Love’, as well as delivering sexy appeal in ‘Were Thine That Special Face’ and an abundance of genuinely funny flourishes in ‘Where Is the Life That Late I Led’.

You can just about see Fred’s egotism as the defence mechanism of a likeable but harried fellow. You’ll want to root for him as he tries to hold together his production, rapidly coming apart.

The secondary leads – Bill Calhoun/Lucentio and Lois Lane/Bianca – are played by Corbin Bleu and Stephanie Styles. Bleu is an electric personality and a terrific dancer. He brings distinctive pizzazz to ensemble numbers and breathtaking athleticism to his solos. The ‘Bianca’ number has him actually tapping on a ceiling, without any scenic trickery.

At the performance reviewed, understudy Christine Cornish Smith took over the role of Lois, in another display of the depth of the Broadway talent pool. Smith was apparently flawless, handling intricate choreography in sure-footed style and delivering her big numbers – ‘Why Can’t You Behave’ and ‘Always True to You in My Fashion’ – with panache. It makes you further comprehend how Shirley MacLaine was whisked away to Hollywood by a movie producer who was in the audience when she made an understudy appearance in Pajama Game.

Other notable contributions come from Terence Archie as the pompous military man who is Lilli’s betrothed, and from John Pankow and Lance Coadie Williams as the two thugs who get mixed up in things and when they find themselves suddenly in front of the curtain break into the immortal homage ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’.

Throughout the show, Warren Carlyle’s choreography ranges from bright to brilliant, from the operetta-like fun of the grape-stompers and their feet-washers in ‘Cantiamo D’Amore’ to the scintillating hip-thrusting in ‘Tom, Dick or Harry’, which leaves little doubt as to the double entendre intended in the title.

Then, there’s the explosive ‘Too Darn Hot’, the ensemble dance piece de resistance, which builds to a jaw-dropping jumping jack finale. Perhaps the only misstep is the overly busy stuff given Lois in ‘Always True to You in My Fashion’, but as noted, Smith handled it with ease.

David Rockwell’s set designs – including the gritty backstage chiaroscuro and the pastel fairy tale look of the Shrew scenery, all gorgeously lit by Donald Holder – and the costumes by Jeff Mahshie, chicly evoking the show’s two time periods give this revival the atmosphere it deserves. And a thunderous bravo is also due the playing of the 16-piece orchestra, conducted by Paul Gemignani, giving ear-embracing sound to Larry Hochman’s orchestrations and David Chase’s dance arrangements.

All in all, in case you haven’t gathered by now, this revival of Kiss Me, Kate is, as the song says, ‘truly wunderbar’.

       Ron Cohen