[Longtime
contributor to Rick On Theater Kirk Woodward feels much the same way about
the classic musicals as I do. I’ve
copped to my inability to be critical of them many times on this blog, but in
“A Broadway Baby” (posted on 22 September 2010), I spelled it out: “I can’t be
very critical about those classic musicals—I love them too much from my
childhood. They’re like theatrical comfort food to me—I hardly see any
faults.” Kiss Me, Kate, the 1948 Cole Porter musical based on
William Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, was one of the classics with which I grew up, courtesy of my father’s
original-cast recordings. We used to
listen to them all the time, particularly during dinner.
[I’ve
seen many productions of Shrew, but the only one whose report I published on ROT (on 21 November 2009) is one I saw at Staunton,
Virginia’s “Shenandoah Shakespeare” in 2003.
(I saw another interesting take on the play in 2007 at the Shakespeare
Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., and I have a report in my archives, but
haven’t used it on the blog yet. Maybe I
will one day soon.) I’ve only seen one
stage production of Kiss Me, Kate,
however. Coincidentally, it was the
National Tour of the 1999 Broadway revival Kirk mentions having missed to his
regret. I saw it in July 2001 at
Washington’s John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, directed by
Michael Blakemore with Rex Smith (replacing Brian Stokes Mitchell) as Fred
Graham/Petruchio and Rebecca York (in for the late Marin Mazzie) as Lilli
Vanessi/Katharine. The interesting thing
with respect to Kirk’s report below is that, except for playwright John Guare’s
“only two noticeable alterations,” producer Roger Berlind kept to Sam and Bella
Spewack’s original Tony-winning book.
(“Why fix what ain’t broke?” asked director Blakemore. “Why can’t you behave?”)
[The
Roundabout Theatre Company, as you’ll read, took a different tack. I’ll let Kirk tell you about the current
revival and you’ll see the dilemma the company and Kirk faced. ~Rick]
I
was excited when I heard that the Roundabout Theatre Company would be
presenting a revival of the musical comedy Kiss
Me, Kate beginning with previews on February 14, 2019, and opening March
14, 2019, for a limited run.
I
grew up on the original cast album of Kiss
Me, Kate on 78 RPM records, featuring Alfred Drake (1914-1992), Patricia
Morrison (1915-2018), Harold Lang (1920-1985), and Lisa Kirk (1925-1990). I
love the music of the show’s composer Cole Porter (1891-1964), both generally,
and in particular in Kiss Me, Kate.
However,
the only time I’ve seen the show was a production in London in the 1970’s that
lacked the verve typical of a Broadway show that the original production (which
opened on December 30, 1948, and ran for 1,077 performances) must have had. I
also saw the unsatisfying 1953 movie, which begins with a “frame story”
including a character named “Cole Porter,” who looks nothing like Cole Porter
but does resemble the composer Irving Berlin (1888-1989).
For
reasons I can’t understand, I missed the 1999 Broadway revival of the musical
starring the magnificent Brian Stokes Mitchell (b. 1957), for which I have been
kicking myself ever since. So as I said I looked forward to the Roundabout’s
production with anticipation. I saw it at a preview performance on February 27,
2019.
Kiss Me, Kate is one of Broadway’s
great success stories. Cole Porter’s career was at a low point in the late
1940s; he had written several undistinguished scores and a couple of outright
flops, and according to a number of sources was generally considered “finished”
in the business.
Most
of the cast and production team for Kiss
Me Kate were either new to their jobs or relatively unknown. According to
George Eells’ biography of Cole Porter The
Life That Late He Led (1967), it was extremely difficult to raise enough
money to finance the show, which ended up with seventy-two backers, an
extremely large number for that time.
Unexpectedly,
the show required almost no rewriting during rehearsal, and no revisions in its out-of-town tryout
in Philadelphia – an unheard of phenomenon up to that time and seldom heard of
since. By the time the show reached Broadway, word was out that it was
virtually perfect.
Porter
was hailed for his greatest score, and the production won five Antoinette Perry
Awards, popularly known as the Tonys, including Best Musical and Best Composer
and Lyricist (Porter).
In
Kiss Me, Kate a theater company is
trying out a musical version of the play The
Taming of a Shrew by William Shakespeare (1564-1616), and the strife between
the leading director, producer, and actor in the play and his leading lady,
also his divorced wife, mirror the strife between Shakespeare’s characters
Petruchio and Katherine (Kate), the “shrew” of the Shakespearean title.
You
have undoubtedly noticed the word “shrew” twice in the previous paragraph and
perhaps you thought that it was inappropriate, or wondered how acceptable a
word it is today, or some similar idea. If so, you are thinking along with the
folks at the Roundabout, who, according to an article in the program by Olivia
Clement, realized that
while the plot is alive with onstage romance,
backstage passion, and a hilarious dash of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, moments in the show are still – and maybe
a little uncomfortably – rooted in the era in which the show was written.
In
this age of the # MeToo movement, “moments” may be an understatement. Both the
“frame” story of the acting company, and Shakespeare’s play itself, present
dominating males with strategies for “taming” the women they love that range
from dubious to downright objectionable.
Did
Shakespeare intend his protagonist, Petruchio, to be admired or loathed?
Considering how many aspects Shakespeare can embody in one character, I am
tempted to answer “both.”
And
Shakespeare does frame his story,
just as the musical frames its story: for a joke, a group of well-to-do people
pick up an unconscious drunk on the street and, when he wakes up, attempts to
convince him that he’s actually a Lord and has forgotten his prosperous past.
The main story of The Taming of the Shrew
is presented to this unfortunate for his entertainment.
I
would say that Shakespeare’s frame story doesn’t help us a great deal in justifying
the Punch-and-Judy violence and male presumption of his play-within-a-play. Of
course we only have the words in the script, and no indication how those words
were played – simply as knockabout farce, or with whatever degree of
compassion?
The
musical Kiss Me, Kate has the same
kind of problem with its frame story. The protagonist, Fred Graham (played by Will Chase), is actually perhaps
one of the less objectionable males in the story. Yes, he is a loud,
domineering director and producer, and yes, he misleads his ex-wife
romantically.
But
his counterpart in the subplot, Bill Calhoun (played by Corbin Bleu) is a
compulsive gambler who sleeps with everybody. Men in general are seen as
motivated by sex (as flat-out stated in the number “Too Darn Hot”).
However,
to tell the truth, Calhoun’s female counter part Lois Lane (played by Stephanie
Styles) is equally problematic, apparently attaching herself to multiple men at
one time, as long as they have money. And Petruchio does beat, mistreat, and “tame” Kate. A fine crew!
Amanda
Green (b 1963), a composer and lyricist best known perhaps for the musical Hands on a Hardbody (which ran on
Broadway in 2013), was brought in to tidy up the more controversial phrasings
in the score. (The playwright John Guare made revisions in the script for the
1999 version. It should also be noted again that I saw the show in a preview
performance, and that further changes may have been made since I saw it.)
Green
alters one of the more blatantly sexual rhymes in the song “Brush Up Your
Shakespeare,” and weaves around the line in “Bianca” that goes “You’d better
answer ‘yes’ or papa spank-a!” However, she makes relatively few changes
compared to those in the movie version (1953).
The
most spectacular change in the lyrics comes at the end of the show. Both
Shakespeare and Porter have Kate sing
I am ashamed that women are so
simple . . .
which
in the current production becomes
I am ashamed that people are so simple . . .
At
this point I find myself wondering if I’m taking the whole thing too seriously
– or if the Roundabout is. In any case, the temper of the times is generally
unforgiving, and one does wonder why the Roundabout decided to present the show
at this particular moment in history. Perhaps the decision was locked in
before, say, Harvey Weinstein was forced to resign?
If
I were directing Kiss Me, Kate today,
I would be tempted to add one more frame story to the show, beginning with a
scene (or voiceover) in which Fred Graham and Lilli Vanessi, his “Kate,”
reminisce about their earlier days in
theater, when times were so different – thereby, perhaps, at least serving
notice that the behavior shown in the play is not being endorsed.
And
I would make the look of the show considerably more down-at-heel, and make it
clear that the Shrew production at
the core of the show isn’t really very good.
I
believe that Porter suggests this in his lyrics – compare, for example, the
performers’ genuine angst in the opening song of the frame story, “Another
Opening, Another Show,” with the superficial repetition in the
play-within-the-play’s “We Open In Venice,” or the wit of “Always True to You
In My Fashion” with the blatant repetition of the word “dick” (which is
actually over-emphasized in the current show) in the song “Tom, Dick, and
Harry.”
Nevertheless,
I suspect the Roundabout is typical in making the play-within-the-play look as
good as the play around it. (The sets are designed by David Rockwell, and the
costumes by Jeff Jahshie.)
Perhaps
the changes I suggest would “distance” the more controversial elements of the
show and make them more palatable. Perhaps not. Perhaps they wouldn’t be
necessary! Reviews for the Roundabout production were largely positive; the
website Show-Score.com reports only
3% negative reviews, for an average review score of 80.
I
was particularly interested to see what Jesse Green of the New York Times thought of the show. He can be counted on to
highlight the social issues of a show, and he does refer to “the elements of
the original Kiss Me, Kate that
rankle our sensibilities today – its gender stereotypes and wife-slapping
argument for womanly submission.”
But
he feels that “the authors’ take on marriage is more complex and insightful
than we may recall,” and he feels that “a few changes in emphasis and one major
revision [which I referred to above] allow us to enjoy it in a new light, as a
two-way ‘taming,’ distorted not by malice but through the mocking filter of
farce,” and he refers to the revisions as a whole as “completely successful.”
Green
does suggest that the inventiveness of the production begins to flag in the
later part of the second act, and I agree, though for different reasons. He
feels the choreography loses its inventiveness; it seems to me in particular
that the song “From This Moment On” (first added in the movie version) stops
the story (although the brilliant arranger, Larry Hochman, embeds a wonderful
musical joke in it), and for some reason, at least when I saw the show, the
song “Brush Up Your Shakespeare,” which ordinarily stops the show in two
senses, fell flat.
The Roundabout’s production of Kiss Me, Kate reminds me that the
classic musicals of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s, despite their appeal, are not
“easy” to stage. They are greatly a product of their times, and the times have
moved on. I believe the effort to stage one successfully today is often likely
to be just that – an effort – but when (for example) it has at its heart a strong
theatrical idea and a glorious Cole Porter score, we shouldn’t stop trying.
[I
once interviewed for a directing gig for Shrew. I had a devil of a time inventing a concept that
would accommodate the noxious sexism of the play. This was back in the ’70s
or ’80s, long before the current #MeToo and #TimesUp movements, and I failed to
come up with anything I could justify (or live with). Needless to say, I
didn’t get the job. (I think I tried to make Petruchio a Mafioso—but that
only added another layer of negative stereotyping on top of the sexism and
chauvinism! Not only didn’t I get hired,
but I couldn’t commit to the Mafia concept enough to convince myself it was a
good idea.)]
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