KISS ME KATE Old Vic

Cole Porter’s heyday was in the 1920’s and 1930’s and by the late 1940’s he was no longer in fashion. Sam and Bella Spewack, nevertheless, managed to persuade him to write the music and lyrics for their musical, which took its inspiration from the famous husband and wife team, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, who, when they were playing in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew in New York in 1935, had behaved off-stage exactly as Petruchio and Kate behaved on-stage, quarrelling all the time. The book has never been totally satisfactory and there is rather too much Shakespeare. The strength of the show, and the best reason for seeing it, are the tuneful and witty songs. For the first time in his life Porter really did make an effort to integrate the songs and the story and Kiss Me Kate is generally considered his masterpiece. He won a Tony award for best musical. High spots of this handsome revival by Trevor Nunn, well-known for his love of Shakespeare and musicals, include Hannah Waddingham singing I Hate Men; Alex Bourne singing Where is The Life That Late I Led?; David Burt and Clive Rowe as two pin-striped gangsters performing the show-stopping soft-shoe shuffle number, Brush Up Your Shakespeare; and dancer Jason Pennycooke leading the company in Too Darn Hot, choreographed by Stephen Mear.