'Kiss Me, Kate'
fulfills sweet valentine craving
By Steven Winn, Chronicle Theater Critic Friday, February 8, 2002
KISS ME, KATE: Musical. Music and lyrics by Cole Porter. Book by Sam and Bella
Spewack. Directed by Michael Blakemore. (Through March 3. At the Orpheum Theatre,
1192 Market St., San Francisco. Two hours, 45 minutes. Tickets: $34- $76. Call
(415) 512-7770 or visit www.bestofbroadway-sf.com).
Audiences may be having too much fun at the Orpheum Theatre this month to think
much about it, but the "Kiss Me, Kate" revival that opened Wednesday is one
choice piece of Broadway history. Witty, sexy, silly, tuneful and determined
to please, Cole Porter's 1948 show delivers a big, bright valentine to the flop-sweat
joy of making musicals the way they used to make musicals.
This love letter comes in a singular package, trimmed in Elizabethan verse, shamelessly self-indulgent wordplay, cracks about Thomas Dewey and Noel Coward and feverish dances. By tucking Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" into a Sam and Bella Spewack story about a pair of dueling egomaniac actors (Rachel York and Rex Smith) bound to reunite, "Kate" takes on a weightless mirror shine. Romance, promiscuity, gangster goons, a hot summer night, Shakespeare's titles -- everything's ripe for a glossy musical number and a grin.
Director Michael Blakemore's
savvy production, the first Broadway revival of the show in a half century,
evokes a period flavor without getting stodgy about it. For San Francisco, fresh
from his staging of "Copenhagen," "Kate" completes a back-to-back display of
Blakemore's 2000 Tony Award winners.
The pacing here is unhurried. Robin Wagner's backstage sets and brightly painted
drops for the "Shrew"-within-the-show recall a theater technology based on hand-pulled
scenery and grunting stagehands. The pleasingly dated orchestral sound favors
woodwinds over brass. Martin Pakledinaz's substantial costumes and Kathleen
Marshall's fine choreography create the deft illusion of bodies effortlessly
transposed from 1948 to the present. For all these assets and some charming
work by the cast, this touring "Kate" does have a recurring tendency to go flat
just when it ought to rise to the next level. Sometimes it's a voice that can't
deliver the goods. Or a muted comic chemistry between York and Smith. Or an
odd perky chasteness in the show's blond sexpot (Jenny Hill) that leaves you
admiring her best-in-show voice without quite buying her sing-all confessions.
The shortcomings are apparent but finally not destructive. Porter's splendid
music and lyrics and Blakemore's artful staging carry "Kate" over the bare spots.
Porter's Broadway comeback, after a string of failures, is a cup running over.
He turns a cheesy German waltz ("Wunderbar") into a moon-eyed love duet, serves
up encyclopedic catalogs of sex ("Always True to You (In My Fashion)") and the
Bard ("Brush Up Your Shakespeare"), and tosses in some lovely ballads and show-stopping
dance numbers for good measure.
It all begins in a beguilingly casual way, as the company for a new musical
version of "The Taming of the Shrew" gathers on a Baltimore stage for the out-
of-town tryout's opening night. "Another Op'nin', Another Show," in one of Blakemore's
great strokes, builds from a tentative a cappella line to a stage- filling exclamation
of camaraderie, hope and wistful what-ifs.
York is a Dior vision of frozen self-composure in that opening scene. Her character, glamorous Lilli Vanessi, is returning to the stage -- in a show starring her ex-husband and impresario Fred Graham (Smith) -- after decamping to Hollywood, and she's not about to come off her pedestal. York uses a wide-eyed blank stare to great advantage. Her voice took a while to loosen up on opening night. But once she'd fallen into the romantic swoon of "Wunderbar" and snarled and kicked her way through "I Hate Men" (as "Shrew's" Kate), York had reached her firm if never quite dazzling level.
Smith brings an emotional quickness and agility to the role of a preening leading man who's been around. His darting eyes, rapid line delivery and pencil-thin mustache sketch a man who's thinking -- and loving -- on his feet. What he lacks, in both voice and bearing, is the darker, swaggering intensity to heat up "Where Is the Life That Late I Led?" or his moodier solos.
While the principal pair in "Kiss Me, Kate" may tool along at less than full throttle, the show offers plenty of diverting side tours. Hill draws an ideal trio of dancing suitors (Stephen Reed, John D. Baker and Jim Newman) in the nice-meets-naughty "Tom, Dick or Harry." That's just a warm-up for Marshall's 10 solid minutes of boiling-over choreography in "Too Darn Hot" (regrettably tempered by Randy Donaldson's poor singing). Chuck Wagner adds a crisp cameo as a ramrod general trying to commandeer Lilli to the marriage altar. And then there are the two gangsters (Richard Poe and Michael Arkin) who hang around until it's time to shuffle off with the show in "Brush Up Your Shakespeare."
It's 10:30, and the audience is lapping up Porter's gleefully contrived rhymes ("heinous" with "Coriolanius") like ice cream. That's one sweet way to wrap up a musical.
E-mail Steven Winn at swinn@sfchronicle.com