Theatreguide.London
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The Theatreguide.London Review
In March 2020 the covid-19 epidemic
forced the closure of all British theatres. Some companies adapted
by putting archive recordings of past productions online, others
by streaming new shows. And we take the opportunity to explore
other vintage productions preserved online. Until things return to
normal we review the experience of watching live theatre onscreen.
Kiss
Me Kate
Hallmark
Hall Of Fame, NBC 1958
BBC 1964 and YouTube March 2023
The hit Broadway musical Kiss Me Kate had songs by Cole Porter and a particularly clever book by Sam and Bella Spewack about the backstage squabbles of a couple playing in The Taming Of The Shrew onstage. It won the very first Tony for Best Musical in 1948.
In 1958 the original stars, Howard Keel and Patricia Morrison, were reunited for an American television production, and in 1964 Keel and Morrison co-starred again in a BBC broadcast.
(Howard Keel also starred in the 1953 Hollywood movie version and yes, he did appear in other shows and films in his long career.)
Both television versions are available on YouTube, but which should you choose?
Actually, there is an easy answer to that, based purely on the technical quality of the two YouTube recordings.
The American version is broadcast quality, in black-and-white but a clean recording. The BBC version is a working tape, complete with digital clock in the corner, and is visually poor, with the black-and-white contrast set so high that whole sequences are either lost in darkness or washed out in pale whiteness.
That's a particular shame because in performance and production terms the British version had the potential to be superior.
It includes a couple of songs inexplicably cut from the American, Too Darn Hot and Were Thine That Special Face, along with a couple of dance sequences that might have been attractive if we could see them.
And the two stars have been encouraged to play a little more loosely than in the American version, having fun with characters who are such hams that they are performing for an imaginary audience even in their private moments.
That is not to say that Keel and Morrison are inadequate in the American broadcast. If they are a little less flamboyant, they make up for it with touches of greater emotional depth, making it clear and touching that these two, for all their fighting, are deeply in love.
Cole Porter's score is recognised as one of his best, and one of the few to approach Rodgers-and-Hammerstein level integration with the story.
Porter was famous for not really caring what his shows were about. He asked for a brief description of plot and characters and then a shopping list – how many love songs, how many production numbers, and so on.
And, indeed, Kiss Me Kate songs like Too Darn Hot, Tom Dick or Harry, and Always True To You Darling In My Fashion could easily be pulled out of or dropped into any other show.
But I Come To Wive It Wealthily and I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple are built on Shakespeare's own words, and Wonderbar, a parody of Viennese operetta, exactly fits the actor couple bound together by shared experiences.
And of course it would be hard to find another show to fit Brush Up Your Shakespeare ('If she says your behaviour is heinous, kick her right in the Coriolanus') into.
As that line (which, incidentally, is censored out of the US version) suggests, Porter's songs here also display his delight in wordplay and in sounding more naughty than they actually are.
Consider Where Is The Life That Late I Led, with its reminiscences of past assignations including Alice in the Pitti Palace, Becky-wecky-o on the pont de vecchio, and Lisa 'who gave new meaning to the leaning tower of Pisa.'
In neither television version do the supporting players particularly register, though Millicent Martin flirts outrageously with the camera in Always True To You for the BBC, and fans of classic sitcoms will recognise Harvey Lembek and Jack Klugman in the American cast.
Gerald
Berkowitz
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