Posted on Fri, Jul. 9, 2009
The show-within-a-show turns into a high-camp treat.
BY BOB CURTRIGHT
Wichita Eagle correspondent
Cole Porter's wickedly witty "Kiss Me, Kate" from 1948 is showing its age a bit because the music - from operetta to jazzy swing - sounds so 1940s-'50s that it can't be updated or given a "relevant" contemporary spin.
It's a pure period piece that also challenges audiences to catch many of the clever, rapid-fire zingers, such as Porter rhyming "heinous" with "Coriolanus" or "menace" with "Merchant of Venice" -"Odds bodkins!"
Music Theatre's long-awaited revival (last performed here in 1978) got off to a bit of a sluggish start on opening night Wednesday. But by halfway through the first act, director James Brennan kicked the show into high gear - and high camp - to become a laugh-out-loud treat.
The musical is structured as a show-within-a-show by Porter's collaborators Sam and Bella Spewak, and the interior play - a hip musical version of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" - is played as wonderfully hammy melodrama.
Adding considerably to this production is the inventive choreography by Patti Colombo. The Act II opening production number, "Too Darn Hot" led by Darryl Reuben Hall, stopped the show with sustained applause.
Mike McGowan, making his MTW debut, and Jessica Wright, back for her first star turn after being in the MTW company a decade ago, play a divorced husband-and-wife acting team who must put their personal feelings on hold to star together again in a desperate ploy to revive their sagging careers. McGowan and Wright are fearless and hilarious as they bicker and battle - on stage and off - as their characters merge with themselves.
The two are also in thrilling voice, whether luxuriating in something lushly romantic like "So in Love" or soaring into the operetta stratosphere with "Wunderbar" or comically lamenting "I Hate Men" (Wright) and "Where Is the Life That Late I Led?" (McGowan). Wright's high notes are ethereal, and McGowan's power can pin you to your seat.
Kimberly Faure, a current MTW company member, and Wes Hart, a former company member, play the leads' sidekicks. Faure, seen earlier as Ulla the blond bombshell in "The Producers," continues to amaze and delight with her strong and beautiful voice and her leggy dancing. Hart ("Seven Brides for Seven Brothers," "A Chorus Line") is a limber high-stepper who can literally leap over people's heads with his dancing.
But the unquestioned scene-stealers are Gordon Joseph Weiss and James Larsen as a Mutt-and-Jeff pair of gangsters who muscle their way onto the stage to collect a gambling debt, but who stay around long enough for the magic to rub off on them. Their "Brush Up Your Shakespeare," as they evolve from stumblebums into a smooth vaudeville team, is pure slapstick poetry. It's worth the price of admission by itself.
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