Picture: Pamela Raith
Kiss Me, Kate continues at the Watermill Theatre, Bagnor until 21 September 2019.
Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩
The great thing about theatre is that it transcends all boundaries. Gender stereotypes, wife-slapping and husband-beating, psychological coercion – they all started way before Shakespearean times and then good old Cole Porter came along post-war and turned the passionate and fiery Taming of the Shrew into a stagey musical comedy where the audience laughs at the misfortune of not just the women but also wryly digs at the male sex and all their faults.
The parallel storyline of ex-husband and wife Fred Graham and Lilli Vanessi fighting both off and on-stage as Petruchio and Katharine, the sub-plot of Lois Lane’s attraction to actor/gambler Bill Calhoun and the more oppressive impact of segregated audiences in the USA in the 40s make Kiss Me, Kate a multi-layered biopic which connects the social strata of 400 years and yet is still enjoyable to watch today.
The slapstick hilarity of Fred and Lilli’s backstabbing which sees its way onto stage during their tempestuous scenes as Petruchio and Katharine should ensure that any production of Kiss Me, Kate is a riotous affair.
However, not until Rebecca Trehearn’s caustic solo of ‘I Hate Men’ does the cast at the Watermill really settle into the larger-than-life storytelling required to bring the production to its raucous conclusion.
All seem to tread fearfully to begin with, the opening number ‘Another Op’nin’, Another Show’ unequivocally underplayed and the cast not fully owning their characters until they relax into this boisterous musical comedy genre later in Act I.
Once the production beds itself in, the cast members begin to shine in their own right. Kimmy Edwards’ Lois Lane is coy and flirtatious with David Ricardo-Pearce forceful as Fred the leading man, Jay Perry plays it cool as Bill and Trehearn’s sublime vocals carry the bigger musical numbers.
Sheldon Greenland and Robert Jackson are hilarious as the two gangsters whose rendition of ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’ is one of the highlights of Act II and Andre Fabien Francis is charmingly engaging as Paul in ‘Too Darn Hot’.
Oti Mabuse’s choreographed routines do not seem to challenge the cast of actor-musicians probably as much as they could, nor does Paul Hart’s direction fully embrace the space, but had this talented cast been given a few more days to settle in, this review would undoubtedly have been four stars.
Julie Watterston
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