by Richard Lord

No list of classic American musicals would be at all credible if Kiss Me, Kate wasn’t high on that list. It became a megahit during the Golden Age of the Broadway musical, the original production running for over two-and-a-half years. But it would be so wrong to call it a relic. In fact, the current Quintessence production shows that Kiss Me, Kate still has the goods to charm and delight audiences.

Kiss Me, Kate hit Broadway at the end of the Forties, as America emerged from the Second World War a deservedly proud victor and was enjoying a full recovery from the privations of the Great Depression. Audiences were therefore in the mood for clever escapism, and that’s just what Kiss Me, Kate delivered. The book, written by the wife-husband team of Bella and Sam Spewack, was enriched with songs spun out for this show by music legend Cole Porter.

The central story line of this show is so tempting, we can still wonder why no writers had grabbed onto the idea before 1948. A divorced couple – both of them celebrated actors – are cast against each other in a production of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. (And ‘against’ is the operative word there.) The creative team of Kiss Me, Kate took this delicious idea and ran with it. The result: we’re invited behind the scenes of a musical version of Taming of the Shrew which is Broadway bound – or hopes to be. However, the production is undergoing a rough tryout limbo in Baltimore. It’s summer in this Baltimore, and the high temps are in no way helping to relieve the behind-the-scenes tempers and tensions.

The headliners of this fictitious show are Fred Graham and Lilli Vanessi, with Vanessi starring as Katherina (a.k.a., Kate) and Graham taking on Petrucchio. Both Lilli and Fred are a highly regarded performers but also a recently divorced couple. Their first interactions let us know that that it was not an amicable divorce.

From there, it all gets a little more tangled. Fred has pulled an Orson Welles-like trifecta with this show; he’s not only lead actor, he’s also the show’s director and producer. Those last two roles give him added power over Lilli, something that puts her in an even more uncomfortable position.

Fred also uses his power as producer-director in pursuing an amorous relationship with Lois Lane, the gorgeous young actress playing Bianca in this production. This Lois Lane’s presumed boyfriend is fellow actor Bill Calhoun, who is no Superman. In fact, Calhoun is a compulsive gambler and something of a scoundrel. Having lost $10,000 in a card game run by a crime boss, Calhoun signs an IOU using Fred Graham’s name. (In today’s dollars, that $10,000 would be worth over $130,000.) Enter two shifty bagmen, there to collect the debt Fred apparently owes that crime boss. Fred first assures the hoods that he never signed that IOU, but then agrees to get them the money when his Taming of The Shrew becomes the box office smash he’s convinced it will be.)

But this is a musical comedy, so there’s no real mayhem to follow – only comically rendered threats. How all the many tangles get untangled is what makes Kiss Me, Kate such an enjoyable show, even in our deeply cynical time. True, the scripting is not brilliant or even all that clever: the various relationships eventually work themselves out a little too easily. More, the switch by which the two gangsters let Fred off the hook is much too convenient by half, what we might call a pay-us ex machina ploy. But by the time everything gets resolved, we’ve been so charmed by the characters and their predicaments that we accept the outcomes as part of the bargain.

The original Spewacks’ text has been tweaked a bit in this edition, as have a few lines from Porter’s lyrics to reflect contemporary sensibilities. But these small changes don’t weaken the story any; rather than seeming an awkward bow to political correctness, it simply makes the show more relevant. In a few spots, the revised text squeezes in nice of-the-moment jokes.

I must confess that with revivals such as this, I only have two possible reactions: “it was an inevitable failure” or “it was a wonderful production”. For the Quintessence take on Kiss Me, Kate, my reaction was the latter. I was enthralled almost all the way through on this show.

Just the staging of this challenging work is impressive. While the Quintessence stageis no match for the big Broadway houses in terms of size, their production does have what we might call a bantam Broadway feel to it. There’s never a sense that this work is too big for their facility.

Most of the credit for the successful staging goes to Todd Underwood, who assumed the roles of director and choreographer for this production. But as the theatre maxim goes, a really good director has to be more than a good traffic cop. Not only does Underwood make good use of the Quintessence stage, but his choreography is exciting, sensual and thoroughly engaging.

Especially because of its vintage, it takes a talented cast with great reserves of on-stage energy to make a production of Kiss Me, Kate successful in the 2020s. Fortunately, the Quintessence cast handles the assignment beautifully. At the center of everything are strong performances by Jennie Eisenhower as Lilli Vanessi and Chris Cherin is Fred Graham. Eisenhower and Cherin interact wonderfully, allowing the parry-and-thrust of their relationship (as well as the Kate-Pertucchio relationship) come through beautifully.

Renee McFillin proves effervescent as Lois Lane, blending a comic flightiness with calculating flirtiness, and then somehow slipping sincerity into that blend. The result is a winning performance. Andrew Burton Kelley plays Bill Calhoun – Miss Lane’s designated darling – as a devious fellow who tries to sail along farther on his limited charm than it’s able to take him. It’s a perfect affectionate mismatch to McFillin’s Lois.

Steven Anthony Wright shoulders a few roles in the show. He’s solid as Baptista, the befuddled father of Kate and Bianca, but he’s absolutely commanding as General Harrison Howell, Lilli’s fiancé. This Howell is a howl as the bumptious boor who sees human relationships (especially male-female relationships) in crude military terms.

As the two hoodlums sent to collect the gambling debt from Fred, Julian Brightman and Matthew Wautier Rodriquez quite simply …uhh, steal every scene in which they appear. These hoods are intended to be the prime comic relief within a warm comedy, and they fulfill that role marvelously. Every time they show up, you can be sure it will be one of more enjoyable scenes  in a show filled with enjoyable scenes. The way Brightman and Rodriquez deliver “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” remind us why this is one of the most popular (perhaps the most popular) songs in the  show.

The actors mentioned above are not the only ones providing solid performances. The ensemble players in this production also contribute significantly to the success of the show. To name just all of them: Amy Chen, Ian Coulter Buford, Livvie Hirschfield, Michael Kozloski and Karley Purnell.

The overall success of this show would not be such a success without the contributions of John Rally for his set design, Anthony Forchielli for his lighting design, and Summer Lee Jack and Julian Warner for the excellent period-appropriate costumes.

Quintessence is also to be applauded for providing excellent live music for this show. (Many productions of this scale opt for recorded music.) The quintet providing these delight comprises Tom Fosnocht and Val Zvin Yatskovsky on piano, Jacob Flaschen on trumpet, Matt Zouzene on reed, and Jerry Tannenbaum on drums.

While many of the major musical revivals that roll into town ask a hundred if not hundreds of dollars per ticket, you can mark this revival of Kiss Me, Kate as a super bargain for which all lovers of classic musicals should be extremely grateful.

Kiss Me, Kate runs at the Sedgewick Theatre, 7137 Germantown Avenue, until January 5. Performances are at 2:00 on New Year’s Eve; 2:00 and 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, Jan. 2; 7:30 on Friday, Jan. 3; 2;00 and 7:30 on Saturday, Jan. 4; and final performance at 3:00 on Sunday, Jan.5.   

The Trivia Trail

Kiss Me, Kate wound up having the longest run of any of Cole Porter’s Broadway shows. It also won the first Tony Award for Best Musical, a category initiated in 1949. Fifty years later, a highly regarded Broadway revival won another Tony as Best Revival of a Musical.

Broadway lore maintains that Rodgers & Hammerstein were approached first to write a musical involving an estranged couple performing Taming of the Shrew together, but decided against it because they wanted to concentrate on South Pacific, which was also a megahit and a Tony Award winner. Five years later, they decided to write a  musical of their own focusing on a backstage romance, which became Me & Juliet. Me & Juliet is universally considered one of that great team’s lesser works.

Ironically, Cole Porter also gave a thumbs-down to the project when first asked to collaborate on this classic. Once a major figure on the Broadway stage before Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Oklahoma set a new template with a “book musical” where the songs and dances were fully integrated into the story, Porter was considered a spent force by many in the late 40s.  Kiss Me, Kate, Porter’s first go at a book musical, revived his Broadway career in a big way.

In a variation of life imitating art, the Spewarks were themselves having serious marital difficulties when the project began.  Legally separated, Bella started working together with Cole Porter on a script, but without Samuel. At some point, Bella decided it would be best to again collaborate with her estranged husband on the project. They reconciled sometime during this collaboration, and their almost 50 year marriage only ended with Samuel’s death in 1971.