Forget the antique sexual politics. The only real problem with the Cole Porter musical Kiss Me Kate could be that it’s just too darned packed.
Opening in London last night, Bartlett Sher’s lip-smacking revival, starring Line Of Duty’s unlikely heartthrob Adrian Dunbar and Broadway diva Stephanie J Block, is a candy store of great songs, hot dancing, smart gags and glorious characters.
The show centres on a 1940s production of Shakespeare’s Italian comedy, The Taming Of The Shrew, which goes wrong when sex-war on stage spreads backstage, consuming the leading man Fred Graham (Dunbar) and his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi (Block).
On the brink of going off the rails, the performance is saved by a couple of starstruck gangsters who insist the show must go on – even if it’s at gunpoint.
Porter’s music and lyrics are tumultuously rendered in the big company dance numbers Another Op’nin, Another Show, and the smouldering Too Darn Hot.
Opening in London last night, Bartlett Sher’s lip-smacking revival, starring Line Of Duty’s unlikely heartthrob Adrian Dunbar (right) and Broadway diva Stephanie J Block (left), is a candy store of great songs, hot dancing, smart gags and glorious characters
The show centres on a 1940s production of Shakespeare’s Italian comedy, The Taming Of The Shrew, which goes wrong when sex-war on stage spreads backstage, consuming the leading man Fred Graham (Dunbar) and his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi (Block)
But there’s intimacy, too: in the warring leads’ duet Wunderbar, which gives way to Block’s scorching I Hate Men and Dunbar’s rueful memories of past conquests, Where Is The Life?
And that isn’t to mention the greatest musical comedy song of all time – Brush Up Your Shakespeare (‘just declaim a few lines from Othella, and they’ll think you’re a hell of a fella…’).
Naturally it all hinges on the leading twosome and in Dunbar and Block they have struck gold.
Luciano Pavarotti, he ain’t.
But Dunbar’s Fred has a good resonant baritone, zinging with Ulster nasality for extra vibrato. And he’s got a great nose for comedy, too, with a frisky touch of Larry David from Curb Your Enthusiasm fame.
Block is a strawberry mezzo-soprano, bringing dignity and pride to Fred’s ex Lilli. But she has delicious comic instincts as well, shovelling a string of sausages down her cleavage as fiery Kate in Shakespeare’s comedy.
And she holds all the cards in the backstage story that includes an affair with Peter Davison’s amusingly regimental American general.
But there’s intimacy, too: in the warring leads’ duet Wunderbar, which gives way to Block’s scorching I Hate Men and Dunbar’s rueful memories of past conquests, Where Is The Life?
On Saturday night the show was cancelled when the welding cracked on one of the wheels that turns the revolve. The metaphorical wheels, however, are reassuringly sound: this is a show that could run and run
Best of all, she ensures the misogyny of Shakespeare’s play is self-evident historical nonsense.
Georgina Onuorah lays on more girl power as ingenue Lois Lane, who tears the house down with her sexy, sassy swagger in Always True To You, while Charlie Stemp is beaming and bendy as her beau, Bill.
But the show is sure to be remembered for the glorious double act of Nigel Lindsay (cotton wool in cheeks for Brando-ish pouches) and deadpan Hammed Animashaun as the two New Yoik gangsters.
It would be wrong not to mention the brick edifice of a set that keeps the action moving with a carousel of scenery – back stage in Baltimore, and on stage in Padua.
On Saturday night the show was cancelled when the welding cracked on one of the wheels that turns the revolve. The metaphorical wheels, however, are reassuringly sound: this is a show that could run and run.
