A rollicking, great Kiss Me Kate

BY THE TIME COLE PORTER STARTED his breakneck-speed Kiss Me Kate project in the sombre aftermath of the Second World War, his glory days of pre-war musical hits were fading. Even he sounded defensive about the project. Turning Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew into a multi-sided romance and a comedy of backstage errors, featuring gangsters, mistaken identity and the era staple of divorced couples still hankering for each other — see also, Private Lives (1930) and The Philadelphia Story (1940) — was an expensive business. Porter even included a sly dig at backers who had been initially reluctant to go with the idea, brandishing the Bard in his defence: “Well, Fred, this is sort of a musical version of The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare, you know …” BARTLETT…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2024

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