Kiss Me Kate

****

This musical within a musical is not actually respectful to members of the acting profession. The four main characters are monsters. We have a temperamental leading lady- Lilli who plays Kate and resorts to violence on stage when upset.
Petruchio is played by her ex husband Fred, a ham actor full of vanity, a bully and a philanderer. Bianca is the soubrette Lois, a young woman who will do anything for rich gifts. Her boyfriend Bill (Lucentio), is an inveterate gambler who commits fraud and nearly destroys the production altogether. In fact they all behave in a most scandalous and unprofessional manner.

Having said all that – the actual show is a positive joy! It is one of Cole Porter’s most brilliant musical scores with lyrics that are witty, bitchy and really funny.

Ryan Lee Seager’s sophisticated and inventive choreography is one of the hits of the show and the production begins with the entire incredibly talented company dancing through the overture ending with Another Op’nin’, Another Show – the best song ever written about the agonies of an opening night.

Red-haired Sabrina Carter is perfect for her role and plays the shrew with huge relish and a thrilling soprano. Her powerful voice and screams during her song I Hate Men are hilarious. She is partnered by Gavin Keenan who gives a new interpretation to both Fred and Petruchio and carries off his two great solo numbers with panache.
In Brush Up your Shakespeare Dominic Quinn and Martin Steven Carlton are both excellent and manage to steal the show!

*****

There is nothing worse than seeing an awful fringe show, but there is nothing better than discovering a world class production hidden away above a pub in Highgate. This Christmas Ovation have staged the fringe premiere of Kiss Me Kate which was last seen in London this time last year when Chichester’s production of the musical transferred to the Old Vic. When this production was announced, having seen Chichester’s brilliant staging, I wondered how such a huge musical could work in such a small theatre… but John Plew’s production has blown me away.

Kiss Me Kate features a show-within-a-show and follows the action both on and off stage as divorcees Lilli (aka Kate, played by Sabrina Carter) and Fred (aka Petruchio, played by Gavin Keenan) star in a production of The Taming of the Shrew. Sparks fly off-stage and the pair seek revenge on-stage during scenes leading to Lilli quitting the show mid-performance. However, when two gangsters turn up (played by Dominic Quinn and Martin Steven Carlton) looking for Fred regarding an I.O.U, they soon realise it is in their interest for Lilli to stay… On paper the story appears confusing but on-stage it’s very easy to follow, Kiss Me Kate is hilarious yet never becomes overly silly or farcical.

Upstairs at the Gatehouse has a larger space than rival fringe theatres, the traverse staging means the performance space is quite long and thin which works perfectly for the production, particularly as the cast ensure both sides of the audience are treated equally. Cole Porter’s score is a dream and features classic after classic. The cast may be small but when they belt out the big numbers I felt as if I was in the West End. The band are also terrific and received huge applause from the adoring audience, all of whom waited to listen to the final play-out.

Ryan-Lee Seager’s choreography is bursting with Broadway glamour and takes the production to a whole new level. I have never seen such huge choreography performed in such a small space, yet no routine ever appeared squashed. The best number is the act two opener ‘Too Darn Hot’ which is led by Dean Bray (Paul). The number builds up gradually until the entire audience were completely transfixed. The cast’s execution of Seager’s choreography could not be faulted and I was left feeling utterly exhausted.

Sabrina Carter gives the performance of a lifetime as Lilli, her portrayal is fierce yet sincere and utterly hysterical. She completely lets go and you can’t help but fall in love with the character. Carter, who also tackles the huge score as if it’s a walk in the park, has fantastic chemistry with Gavin Keenan who has put his own spin on Fred. His overly camp, spontaneous performance left many open-mouthed and roaring with laugher; he grows with the show and comes into his own during the second act.

Having seen Chichester’s production at the beginning of the year I can’t help but compare the two shows which are very different but equally as perfect. It’s refreshing to see so many of the characters interpreted completely differently as it would be boring to sit through the exact same show again. The only moment which I found a little disappointing was Carter’s rendition of ‘I Hate Men’. After watching Hannah Waddingham belt and scream her way through the number at the Old Vic I wondered if she was ever going to be able to speak again, let alone carry on with the show. Her performance was the highlight of the evening so I was a little underwhelmed by Ovation’s staging of the song. Obviously this is a minor detail, I just thought more could have been done with such a big number.

As well as ‘Too Darn Hot’, other highlights came during act two with Dominic Quinn and Martin Steven Carlton’s never-ending rendition of ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’ which, once again, showcases Seager’s remarkable choreography, and Gavin Keenan’s rendition of the ‘So In Love’ reprise. Keenan’s characterisation builds and builds so it was nice to see him calm down and perform the number with sincerity.

Kiss Me Kate is known for being quite a long show but I didn’t find one moment of this production dull or boring. If you’re looking for a classy, high quality (and not overpriced) evening at the theatre you must make time to see this delightful production.

KISS Me Kate is a rich treat, pulled off superbly here at one of London’s best fringe theatres. As always, Cole Porter’s farcical show-within-in-a-show is a little slow to ignite. Be patient while it carefully sketches out its characters and sets up its clever sub-plots. Once ready to roll, once everything is in place, every scene becomes a winner. And it is real rollicker.

Gavin Keenan is worth the trip to Highgate village alone, nailing this twin role job as egotistical male lead Fred Graham, who in turn is playing Petruchio from Shakespeare’s The Taming Of The Shrew. His performance is something of a masterclass, a camper (without overdoing it) version of the Petruchio last seen in Trevor Nunn’s lively stab at Kiss Me Kate at the Old Vic at the end of last year.

The willingness to depart from that successful production is part of the skill and craft here. Director John Plews makes this gig his own. That isn’t the easiest thing to do so effortlessly but unsurprising if you’ve ever seen one of the annual musicals they stage here at Christmas every year. Keenan is the only guy on stage for the night’s stand out moment, a blushed rendition of Where Is The Life That Late I Led, a casanova’s lament which eases into the kind of set piece you wish would go on and on.

That all said, it would be unfair not to celebrate his co-star Sabrina Carter as well. A West End talent with rolling eyes and lungs to envy, she’s almost in showboating mode here. In a good way. Their spitting magnetism means this cute premise of a couple of actors falling in and out love and back again while live on stage is made just perfect. This is five stars material, it would be a shame to miss it.

Kiss Me Kate continues at Upstairs at the Gatehouse, London until 26 January 2014.

Cole Porter’s lovely Kiss Me Kate (comma deleted in line with the recent Old Vic revival and all the better for it) is one of those special musicals, like West Side Story and My Fair Lady, in which virtually every song is a humdinger.

And when you have a show that is not only supremely tuneful and every bit as witty as it was when it won a 1949 Tony, ran for more than a thousand performances on Broadway and revived Porter’s flagging reputation after the accident that crippled him, you are pretty certain to have a thoroughly entertaining evening.

So it is at the warm and intimate Gatehouse fringe theatre in north London where the show, directed by Ovation’s John Plews, and with a cast bursting with energy and talent, has just begun a six-week run that is well worthy of your attention as an upmarket Christmas panto, if nothing else.

The story of course involves a production of a musical version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew in unlovely Baltimore and the conflict on and off-stage between Fred Graham, the show’s director, and his ex-wife and leading lady Lilli Vanessi, who, of course, is playing Katherine, the shrew of the title, while Fred doubles as Petruchio. There is a subsidiary romance between Lois Lane, the actress playing Bianca, and her gambler boyfriend Bill who has got two hoods, superbly played by Dominic Quinn, making his professional debut, and Martin Steven Carlton, chasing him.

Songs of the quality and durability of ’Too Darn Hot’, ‘So in Love’, ‘From This Moment On’, ‘Always True to You in My Fashion’, ‘Another Op’nin’, Another Show’ and those comic masterpieces ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’ and ‘I Hate Men’ guarantee a winner unless a mess is made of them, and that most assuredly does not happen on the compact Gatehouse stage where the audience almost sits on top of the actors.

With a five-strong band playing their socks off on the upper level, a pared-down cast of 13, some playing three or four parts (compared with an orchestra of 28 and cast of 26 on Broadway) makes the most of every opportunity.

Sabrina Carter, so good as Minnelli in the recently-reviewed Liza, Liza, Liza at the Tabard, is a feisty shrew who acts as well as she sings, and her ‘I Hate Men’ is delivered with rare relish; Gavin Keenan is a camp and very funny ex-husband who inexplicably wants her back, and Olivia Holland-Rose, playing Lois in her first year since graduating from that hotbed of excellence, the Guildford School of Acting, absolutely nails ‘Always True to You in My Fashion’.

Robbie Durham as her boyfriend Bill, and Dean Bray, a Mountview graduate making his pro bow as Paul, also catch the eye, and the frenetic team of dancers hit the heights in Act II’s sizzling opener ‘Too Darn Hot’.

It would be a churlish critic who found much to complain about: a bit more tap-dancing would have been great, and one or two high notes were maybe a little strident for such a small auditorium, but ‘Wunderbar’ just about summed up the general impression and what John and Katie Plews have created is not just confined to the stage. A great sense of community and feel-good feeling are achieved off-stage, the programme (so often a let-down in fringe productions) is full of information, and even if it was a grey, wet evening outside, at the Gatehouse the sun is firmly in the ascendant.

The lead roles of Petruchio and Katherine are played by ex-husband and wife Fred Graham and Lilli Vanessi who are not exactly getting on, especially since Lilli has been in pictures since their divorce.

You probably know most of the numbers too for they have all become classic Cole Porter show tunes and here they are delivered with great verve.

It is a bit cheeky of Ovation to have acquired permission for this first fringe production of the show only a year after the lavish Chichester production was on at the Old Vic but, with a fraction of the budget, a cast of twelve and a five piece-band, they demonstrate that with ingenuity and artistry a small-scale version can pack quite a punch and offer considerable gains in the proximity of director John Plew’s traverse-staged production.

Plews goes full tilt for comedy and scores. He leaves no time to worry about the contrivances of the plot and the implausibility of some parts of it: you are carried on a wave of great songs and laughter. Even Fi Russell’s costumes designs are funny and Plews makes the rapid and cleverly choreographed scene changes almost a running joke in their slick execution by the cast.

Gavin Keenan’s Fred Graham is a camply English thespian, his Petruchio all floating finger-ends but he flourishes them with finish. His ex-wife’s tart remarks about his talent all-too-accurate. He’s one of those theatre folk whose queer as a coot exterior hides a hetero Lothario and he can give as good as he gets. Sabrina Carter is a stunning Lilli Vanessi with a great stage presence and a smashing voice. She can deliver a number with vocal polish and dramatic directness.

There is another excellent pairing in Olivia Holland-Rose and Robbie Durham as Lois Lane (Bianca) and her boyfriend Bill Calhoun (Lucentio). They deliver “Why Can’t You Behave” and “Always True to You in My Fashion” with wit and style. It is Bill’s gambling IOU in Graham’s name that brings Dominic Quinn and Martin Steven Carlton’s pair of gangsters into the story with another dose of comic capers and a splendid rendering of “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” that gets a varied repertoire of dance styles in a single number.

Phillip Arran, doubling the actor playing Katherine’s father Baptista and Vanessi’s husband-to-be General Harrison Howell, and the rest of the strong ensemble make up a company that drives the show with snazzy dancing choreographed by Ryan-Lee Seager, cunningly fitted into this traverse staging, and great singing from that great opening number “Another Openin’ Another Show” to the lushness of “Wunderbar”, the romance of “So in Love”, the eroticism of “Too Darn Hot” or the brutal force of Vanessi’s “I Hate Men”.

There’s excellent playing too from the band under musical director Simon Burrows, though just occasionally percussion gets too loud, drowning out a few lines (unless a singers mic went down momentarily).

Upstairs at the Gatehouse seems to have a way with musicals and have done it again with a show for Christmastide that is packed with favourite Cole Porter songs.

A new production of a Cole Porter musical classic is ideal fare to banish the post-festive blues, says MICHAEL STEWART

****

Ovation’s production of Kiss Me Kate is packed with gemlike numbers such as Wunderbar, From This Moment On and Always True To You in My Fashion, along with show-stoppers It’s Too Darn Hot and Brush Up Your Shakespeare.
And they are done full justice on the Gatehouse’s tiny traverse stage, which pounds with the frenzied energy of a talented cast in a production which does not let up from start to finish.

Though director John Plews has had to reduce the normal West End cast of around 30 down to 14 performers and make do with five musicians, the production’s in-yer-face, “let’s do the show right here” feel overcomes those obstacles and works in its favour.

The marriage of Cole Porter’s music and lyrics with Sam and Bella Spewack’s book tells the tale of egotistical actor Fred Graham (Gavin Keenan) and his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi (Sabrina Carter), who are staging a musical version of Shakespeare’s Taming Of The Shrew in a US provincial theatre.

As the protagonists Katharine and Petruchio, their offstage/onstage bitching and feuding mirror the conflict of Shakespeare’s play and there are some great gags, as when Vanessi reminds Keenan that at the last theatre they awarded him a gigantic ham for his efforts.

Those familiar with Howard Keel’s uber-butch Graham in the famous MGM musical, all macho swagger, may wonder at Keenan’s portrayal which is so camp you wonder how he got anywhere near his wife in the first place.
But it does gives her rendition of I Hate Men added clout. Though that interpretation may be off-putting at first, by the end of the first act you buy into it, perhaps because it is a sly reference to Cole Porter’s own marriage of convenience where his spouse acted as a “beard” for his homosexuality.

The two leads attack Porter’s songs with a superb gusto and the rest of the cast can’t be faulted. A special delight is Ryan-Lee Sager’s choreography, all sinuous, writhing limbs and sexy attitude, which is showcased to perfection during It’s Too Darn Hot.

I felt exhausted afterwards. But 20 years younger.

Another op’nin’ – of another terrific show

As Lilli Vanessi, the temperamental diva playing Kate in a Baltimore try-out of a musical Taming of the Shrew, Sabrina Carter is superb. Fiery, with red hair and a terrific voice, she is the best thing in John Plews’ first fringe staging – full of vitality and invention – of Kiss Me Kate.

It is one of the perfect musicals with matchless songs and a really good book. Lilli, whose Hollywood career is not going well, has come back to the theatre, co-starring with ex-husband Fred Graham, with whom she cannot get along. They row constantly, as do Kate and Petruchio.

Things are complicated when a couple of gangsters turn up to collect a debt owed by the juvenile lead, and mistake Fred for the debtor.

At a couple of moments one wondered what was different. The answer is Plews has used the 1999 Broadway revival version, which includes ‘From This Moment On’, dropped from another Porter show, ‘Out of this World’.

It doesn’t matter, but one does wonder why Petruchio’s ‘Were Thine That Special Face’ is missing and why Lilli speaks Kate’s submission speech instead of singing Porter’s wistful song.

Gavin Keenan is very funny as Fred/Petruchio but a bit too camp for comfort. Fred may be a ham Shakespearean, but he was married to and still loves Lilli. The audience found him hilarious, but it is a risky interpretation. A straight Fred and camp Petruchio is fine, but making both the same is dubious.

As the gangsters, younger than usual, Dominic Quinn and Martin Steven Carlton perform ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’ in a far more athletic way than usual and fully deserve the encores which are written into the score.

It could be the fault of the sound system, but some of the words of the song were lost. Olivia Holland-Rose, who sparkles nicely as Lois Lane, was also less than clear in her big number, ‘Always True to You Darling in My Fashion’. In Porter, the words always matter.

This remains a great show in an inventive production with a splendid band, athletic choreography and a thrilling leading lady.

****

Kiss Me Kate is based around the off and on stage antics of a cast performing in a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew. The lead actor, Fred Graham, who is also the producer and director is in constant spats with his leading lady, Lilli Vanessi, a failed Hollywood actress and also his ex wife. Throw in a subplot between the second leads Lois Lane and Bil Calhoun and mix well with some gangsters and you’ve got a pretty ridiculous show.

The show opens with a burst of energy with the youthful ensemble rehearsing for the opening and this production is at its best during the large production numbers. The quality of the dancing from the cast can easily rival the West End.
Gavin Keenan as Fred Graham gets some real laughs from his lines and he is particularly enjoyable to watch in his scenes playing Petruchio in the show within a show. His leading lady Sabrina Carter is a terrific Lilli. Her smouldering anger is palpable and her voice is simply stunning. The two actors work well together demonstrating great chemistry and confidence on the stage with each other.

The star of this production though may well be Olivia Holland-Rose in the role of Lois Lane. Her voice and her stage presence are both wonderful. She owns the stage and was born to be there. Her rendition of Always True to you in my Fashion was goosebump inducing. If she isn’t leading a West End cast in a few years it will be a great loss.
The rest of the cast are all excellent with special mention going to Dean Bray as Paul who really makes the most of his big moment in Too Darn Hot.

John Plew’s production places an emphasis on the music and occasionally feels as though it is struggling against the book which now feels somewhat old fashioned. Lines which could be played for laughs sometimes fall a bit flat which can lead to some of the longer scenes dragging. It is never too long until the next song though which picks up the pace again and gets things back on track.

Fi Russell’s set is simple and makes wonderful use of the Gatehouse space. The five piece band sound beautiful although the sound levels were way off meaning that the music drowned out a a lot of the singing. In such a small venue this is pretty unforgivable and needs to be addressed pronto.

Rating: 5 out of 5

Cole Porter’s Kiss Me Kate is a story about a pair of divorced actors, Fred and Lillie who were previously married to each other and end up starring in a performance of Taming of the Shrew together. Two local gangsters mistakingly believe that Fred owes them money and Lilly mistakingly believes that Fred has fallen in love with her again.
First shown in 1953, and many times since, this version of the classic hit performance has fantastic music with many comical laugh out loud moments.
Kiss Me Kate is currently showing at the Upsairs at the Gatehouse Theatre in Highgate until 26 January 2014, with tickets prices ranging from £12 to £18. It is considered a Fringe theatre and has a very intimate setting so you can really feel part of the performance. It has been produced by Ovation which is the Gatehouse’s in-house production team who only do a few shows every year but of exceptional quality.