Cole Porter's late-career Shakespeare pastiche Kiss Me Kate was Opera North's latest tour show to hit the Theatre Royal last week. Following on from the success of previous visits to Nottingham with critically acclaimed and lesser known work from the world of the opera, this is one of the first times I can remember them venturing into musical theatre. The success of this change of genre in Jo Davies' production is a mixed bag.
The plot is a clever one: divorced Broadway stars Fred Graham and Lilli Vanessi are opening their production of The Taming of the Shrew in 1950s Baltimore as leads Petruchio and Katherine. Backstage tensions overspill into on-stage action with romantic misunderstandings between Fred, the soon-to-be-remarried Lilli and their young co-star Lois Lane, playing Catherine's beautiful younger sister Bianca. Added to this Lois' boyfriend Bill, also in the show playing Lucentio, has signed an IOU for his gambling debts to Mr Hogan, the local mafia don, causing his collectors to pay the theatre a visit - eventually ending up as part of the show.
The show is unbalanced in this production but there is much to enjoy. Tiffany Graves’s Lois is superb and her two solos (‘Why Can't You Behave?’ and ‘Always True to You in My Fashion’) got some of the biggest ovations of the night. Ashley Day as Bill is also a fantastic mover, although I questioned some of the choreography in his Bianca dance. However, the undeniable highlight is a show-stealing Brush Up Your Shakespeare by Joseph Shovelton and John Savournin as the pair of mafia heavies with a talent for menace and the early-modern. Added to this a full and dazzlingly brilliant orchestra accompanying the action and playing the tunes was a real joy to see and hear.
For me though, there were too many things that stopped the show really sizzling. Wayne Robinson as Fred's assistant Paul opens the second act with the brilliant ‘Too Darn Hot’ but the Opera North chorus of local singers struggle with the sharpness of the dance-moves needed for this jive and jumpin' number, and neutered some of the sexiness of it. I love Opera North's use of their chorus, and it’s key to what they do, but in this show it worked less well than it would in a traditional opera production. There were too many ingredients in the one show with opera leads, musical theatre performers in the supporting roles, a small core dance team and the chorus. This never fully gelled and, whilst it's great to see loads of people on a stage, a smaller tighter cast, especially in the dance numbers, would have been better.
This again is true in the singing. The vocal quality of the two leads, Quirjin De Lang and Jeni Bern, is brilliant yet it lacks the trippingness of Cole Porter's clever quick lyrics and style. Graves stands out because she is precisely the type of performer that Porter wrote this for, and she's a fantastically talented all-rounder: her dancing and acting was great too. Comparatively, De Lang and Bern lacked zip in their delivery of Bella and Samuel Spewack's witty, pacy script.
The worlds of the play too were not fully defined in the production. When we were off-stage there was still too much of an air of hammy acting that didn't allow for the ramping up of campery when they were on stage performing the Shakespeare. There was also an overly faffy set, which ought to clarify the off- and on-stage worlds of the play but instead serves to make excessively complicate transitions between the actors "on" and "off" stage.
Kiss Me Kate was a fun night at the theatre, especially the second act where the show really moves along apace, but never fully convinced in the same way their other, more opera-based work has. If this production proved anything to me it was that this is a show for a musical theatre, and not an opera company but this was about as best an opera company could do with it due to the amount of new and different parts that come into play when making the show. This might have been a step too far in terms of ambition but I look forward to seeing Opera North give us another opening of another show.
Kiss me Kate played at Nottingham's Theatre Royal on Friday 20 and Saturday 21 November 2015.
We have a favour to ask
LeftLion is Nottingham’s meeting point for information about what’s going on in our city, from the established organisations to the grassroots. We want to keep what we do free to all to access, but increasingly we are relying on revenue from our readers to continue. Can you spare a few quid each month to support us?
