Culture | Theatre Call it magic or call it pizazz, the mystery ingredient that makes a show truly sing is missing from Bartlett Sher’s revival of Cole Porter ’s classic. A musical about a warring couple mounting a musical version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew (itself a play within a play about a warring couple), this self-referential love letter to showbiz is structurally complex but should feel fizzy and light. Here it’s solid, serviceable, but unexciting, thanks partly to the lack of chemistry between the leads, Broadway veteran Stephanie J Block and Line of Duty star Adrian Dunbar .
The lack of verve means you notice that the first-half songs mostly service the tricksy wordplay of Sam and Bella Spewack’s lyrics while all the best numbers (Too Darn Hot, Always True to You in My Fashion, Brush Up Your Shakespeare) and big laughs are loaded into the second. The thinly drawn secondary love interests, Bill and Lois, are mostly a waste of the prodigious talents of Charlie Stemp and Georgina Onuorah. Anthony van Laast’s choreography is brisk and forceful, but the sketchy sets of Michael Yeargan look cheap.
Thank goodness for Hammed Animashaun and Nigel Lindsay, who turn their un-named, mutt-like gangsters into a comic double-act for the ages. Dunbar makes his musical theatre debut as actor-impresario Fred Graham. He sings better than I had hoped but seems uncomfortable and off the pace throughout, often clutching at the fringes trailing from the doublet he .
