In the past year, musical theatregoers can hardly fail to have noticed that the West End is currently trucking for a trend of ‘new is better’. Since the Operation Mincemeat phenomenon took over, the London theatre scene has been stormed by a range of small-scale, quirky musicals – Two Strangers, Babies, Kathy and Stella Solve a Murder, to name a few. But, if The Barbican’s latest run of Kiss Me, Kate proves anything, it’s that there’s always room for a classic.
Starring Line of Duty’s Adrian Dunbar and Broadway legend Stephanie J Block, this new adaptation from director Bartlett Sher is lively, lavish and completely charming, bringing some much-missed glamour and spectacle back to the London stage. First written in 1948 by Cole Porter (who also wrote Anything Goes), the show follows the behind-the-scenes action of a musical production of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. At the centre are divorced couple Fred and Lilli (Dunbar and Block) whose story of hatred and lost love mirrors that of Petruchio and Kate.
As the cast tries desperately to get through opening night, the performance becomes side tracked by Fred and Lilli’s antics, not to mention gun-toting gangsters who are there to collect Fred’s debts...
If you’ve seen the original film, you’ll know that the genius of Kiss Me, Kate is in how it juggles the complex play-within-a-play story with dazzling musical numbers, comedic subplots, and fraught emotional ties – Shakespeare could never! – and S.