New York, don't bite your nails worrying if they botched up Kiss Me Kate like they did Annie Get Your Gun. Kate is (as in the title of the show's deliciously nostalgic waltz) "Wunderbar." Although un-billed playwright John Guare has done a little tweaking of the original book that Bella and Sam Spewack ingeniously fused with William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, there is no radical revisionism at work here. In fact, the respectful tinkering -- by Guare, director Michael Blakemore and choreographer Kathleen Marshall -- is undoubtedly getting the thumbs up in the beyond from composer Cole Porter and maybe even the Bard. Blakemore, who imaginatively staged another plot-within-a-plot musical, City of Angels, has done a bang-up job preserving the flavor and integrity of Kiss Me, Kate.
First produced to acclaim in 1948, "Kiss Me Kate," is one of the great ones. It is filled to the brim with terrific Porter songs, witty dialogue and dancing that, as if you didn't know, is "Too Darn Hot." This sung and danced highlight, set in the alley back of the theater following a performance, provides a dazzling showcase for the fine dancer Stanley Wayne Mathis and the limber and lusty-looking company. And what a marvelous casting coup to have Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin Mazzie, who co-starred together in Ragtime, be reunited as the hot-tempered romantic show biz team that fights to the finish backstage and on. They bring unbridled panache to the show. Mitchell's rich baritone voice and his comely virile countenance are perfectly suited to the egotistical attitudes and poses he assumes. Sheer pleasure comes from listening to Mazzie's lustrous soprano voice as she turns from snarling hellcat to beguiling heroine. You can expect the company's antics in old Padua, cued in by the hilariously repetitive "We Open in Venice," to provide laughter. But that's nothing to the laughs generated by Michael Mulheren and Lee Wilkof, who, as two stone-faced gangsters smitten by the Bard, stop the show with "Brush Up Your Shakespeare." The only significant alteration made by Guare is to emphasize the sexist attitude of Lilli's fiance, General Harrison Howell (Ron Holgate), a stiff-necked, autocratic woman-chaser with his eyes on the presidency and his hands on Lili, as another prized possession. Although sung well, Holgate's song "From This Moment On," (not in the original show, but in the film version) seems awkwardly inserted. There's a lulu of a subplot that involves a flirtatious actress Lois/Bianca (Amy Spanger) and her gambling boyfriend/actor, Bill/Lucentio (Michael Berresse, in an awesomely acrobatic performance). Lois and Bill are more comically defined characters, and their songs "Why Can't You Behave," and "Always True to You (in My Fashion)" are audaciously performed. No brush up is needed to appreciate the artistry of Robin Wagner's big and bountiful settings and Martin Pakledinaz's snappy and silly costumes.
