©The Middleton Press
May 5, 1994


Sparkling, Sassy 'Kate' Opens
Goodspeed 31st Season
By: Kathy O’Connell

Here’s what makes the Goodspeed Opera House durable: just when you
think they are going to mount another exquisite but slightly obscure
little gem from bygone days (yawn) full of froth and charm (how nice),
they pull a fast one. They shake out Cole Porter’s 1948 Kiss Me Kate
and send you to the door singing to yourself. Even if you can’t sing.

The last time that happened was at Animal Crackers in 1992,
and while a strong argument could be made that Groucho Marx’s wit
was every bit as sharp as Porter’s, it was a whole different kettle
of swordfish. Or let’s just say Groucho was swordfish and Porter was
caviar. With toast points.

It’s been thirty years since Porter died, but listening to his lyrics is
still beguiling and thrilling all at once. If his best songs weren’t so
elegant and sophisticated, they’d reek of style. As it is, the style’s just
there, like the wordplay and the sly, sleek pokes just beneath the surface.

And what better setting for all of this than the theater? Sam and Bella
Spewack’s book was inspired in large part by the reports of the backstage
bickering of the legendary acting couple Alfred Lunt and Lynne Fontaine;
it was rumored that some of their fights onstage kept going after the
curtain had run down.

Enter Fred Graham and Lillli Vanessi (Steve Barton and Marilyn Caskey)
once married; now divorced yet still working together, this time on the
musical version of The Taming of the Shrew. Fred has got his eyes
on the company ingenue, Lois Lane (Leah Hocking) and Lilli’s engaged to
a lecherous congressman, Harrison Howell (Kenneth Garner)

Add to that Lois’ boyfriend, Bill Calhoun (Michael Gruber), a member of
the company who’s $10,000 in the hole to some gangsters, and the gangsters
gunmen (Mark Lotito and Kevin McClarnon), who have come to the theater (in
Baltimore; they’re in tryouts) to collect. And from Fred, because Bill
signed Fred’s name to the IOU.

All of that may seem disjointed, but once this Kiss Me Kate gets
going – thanks to Liza Gennaro’s choreography, it’s delightfully physical,
and even that’s funny most of the time – its witty solidity drives it with
a predictability so smooth you know exactly what’s going to happen next.

Barton and Caskey are delightful together, especially when they’re bickering
(a long scene in which Lillli receives flowers meant for Lois is hilarious),
and Hocking, mixes coquettishness with a self-mocking savvy Mae West might
envy. But the pair who bring down the house is Lotito and McClarnon.

They show up towards the end of the first half, and Fred convinces them
not to let Lilli out of their sight. The sight of these yeggs in tights
and doublets is funny by itself, but the two’s delivery is exquisitely dense
in the manner of the Dead End Kids and the Bowery Boys, and it makes their
delivery of “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” – and the accompanying physical
punctuation – one of Kiss Me, Kate's highlights.

Then again, it could be said this Kate is one highlight after
another: Caskey’s lovely soprano on: "So in Love” and “I Am Ashamed That
Women Are So Simple”; Barton’s cozy baritone on “I’ve Come To Wive It
Wealthily In Padua” and “Where Is The That Late I Led”; and Hocking’s
“Always True to You In My Fashion”.

The Goodspeed has begun its 31st season not just on the right foot, but
in the right voice and the right humor, too.


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