By John Farrell Special to the Press-Telegram
Kisses for 'Kate'

Musical Theatre West production lively and Lovely

THIS SUMMER IT is hot, almost too darn hot, for composer Cole Porter.

The man who may be America's greatest songwriter (there are a couple of other candidates, but his is in the running, anyway) is featured in a new biographical film, "De-Lovely," starring Kevin Klein and featuring much of his music, out of context (and even historical order).

He is also treading the boards at the Carpenter Performing Arts Center, where Musical Theatre West is closing its 51st season with a lively, sexy, funny and provocative production of "Kiss Me, Kate" (lyrics and music by Porter, book by Sam and Bella Spewack). It opened Saturday and continues through July 25. Sunday's matinee performance is reviewed here.

The film will give you an idea of Porter's life and loves, but if you want to know just why Porter rates so high on the all-time list, Kiss Me, Kate" is the way to find out. MTW'S production is fast, juicy, theatrical, appealing from start to finish, and it conveys in no uncertain terms Porter's brilliant genius with a rhyme, with innuendo, with romantic lyrics and with a brilliant melody.

Compared with most modern musicals, "Kate" is a tune-filled romp. Porter's gift for melodic invention was immense and after the Spewacks had finished the musical, he apparently kept writing more songs, even after they asked him to stop. Every song is memorable, from "Too Darn Hot" to "Wunderbar," form "Why Can't You Behave" to "Brush up your Shakespeare" (one of the numbers Porter wrote after the show was finished).

It's also a double story, one set behind the scene of a theater company putting on a musical version of Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew," the other that musical in the flesh. Both stories revolve around the love lives of the principles, Fred Graham, the actor who plays Petruchio (David Engel), and Lilli Vanessi, who plays Katherine (Elizabeth Ward Land), Lilli and Fred were once married, then divorced, and have a love-hate relationship that is as rough as that of Petruchio and Katherine, the beautiful Renaissance lass who hates men and is violently willful about it.

Then there are Lois (Elna Binkes) and Bill (William Akey), a couple who play lovers on stage and off, though Lois has a strange idea of faithfulness. These two couples try to work out their love lives while the cast frenetically rehearsed and performs its new musical in a Baltimore tryout.

Lilli and Fred come to blows on stage, after fighting in their dressing rooms, remembering lost love and blaming each other. Lilli is ready to leave the theater forever, in the middle of the performance, but two gangster enforcers - David Holladay and Ray Leake Jr. - dressed in slick pinstripe suits, fedoras and automatic pistols, show up to collect a gambling debt. Bill signed Fred's name to the IOU, but, rather than deny the debt, Fred persuades the two gangsters to keep Lilli in the show against her wishes.

Backstage and in front, during the show and between acts, the story progresses as Lilli gets ready to leave her husband and show business and set off on a new life with her new beau, Gen. Harrison Howel (Noah York).

All this takes place in brilliant dance numbers, choreographed by Jane Lanier and performed by a cast that seems as limber as any group of Olympic athletes. Carol Dennis as Hattie introduces the backstage life with "Another Op'nin, Another Show" and later she and Paul (Gerry McIntyre) sing "Too Darn Hot," with the help of Akey and the whole company, taking the song from the blues to a hot dance number and back.

Director Rick Sparks keeps the whole company jumping through the evening, moving through scene changes and backstage and front-stage numbers with ease and simple effect. Musical Director Stephen Gothold directs from the pit and has a way with Porter's big and brassy, fast paced score.

Engel's Petruchio is handsome, domineering, a powerful passionate masculine presence; Land's Lilli is equally powerful and willful. Binkes is a flirtatious little minx, loving all the attention, and Akey's Bill is passionate and personable. Holladay and Leake are hilarious as the gangsters who end up first in Renaissance garb and the, trapped in front of the curtain, prove themselves song and dance men in "Brush Up Your Shakespeare," including three separate encores, each more elaborate than the last.

The only complaint one could issue against this show is that the Shakespearean dialogue and the non-Shakespearean, is sometimes rushed and hard to understand, though all the songs are clearly sung and perfectly timed.

The costumes, based on the originals designed by Martin Pakledinaz, are brilliant colored, wonderfully effective, and the dancers and singers in secondary roles are delightful, creating characters with gestures and glances, with small bits of business, sharp glances and sly smiles..

7/14/2004

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