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music & lyrics by Cole Porter, book by Sam & Bella Spewack, directed by Michael Lichtefeld

Drayton Entertainment, St. Jacobs Country Playhouse, St. Jacobs

August 9-September 1, 2024

Chorus: “The overture is about to start,

You cross your fingers and hold your heart,

It’s curtain time and away we go!”

I feel very lucky to have caught the final performance of the Drayton Entertainment production of Kiss Me, Kate at the St. Jacobs Country Playhouse. It was so good, however, I wish I had seen it earlier just so I could have the chance to recommend it to readers as one of the best musicals on offer this summer in Ontario. The show, packed with famous songs, has a top-notch cast, crisp direction and a feast of great singing, dancing and acting.

The past six years have seen a strange move in Toronto and at the Stratford Festival away from the musicals of Broadway’s Golden Age (c. 1943-1965). Stratford has staged Kiss Me, Kate twice, in 1989 and 2010, but has since moved into more contemporary musicals. Toronto, of course, is always obsessed with whatever is new. Therefore, it good to see that some theatre festivals like the Shaw and Drayton are still willing and able to tackle the classics.

Kiss Me, Kate (1948) is a classic in more ways than one, being a musical about people staging a musical version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. As I noted in 2010 about the plot, “Fred Graham is trying out a musical version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew in Baltimore starring himself as Petruchio and his ex-wife, Lilli Vanessi as Katherine the Shrew. Meanwhile, he has been flirting with former nightclub chorus girl Lois Lane, whose boyfriend Bill has lost $10,000 gambling and signed an IOU with Fred’s name. While the show is playing, two gangsters become involved onstage as they try to enforce payment from Fred. The conceit of Porter’s musical is that we form the audience when the musical within the musical is onstage but that we watch the backstage actions through the invisible fourth wall”.

Stratford’s two productions both were staged at the Festival theatre. Drayton’s is at the St. Jacobs Country playhouse. The huge advantage for the audience is seeing such a famous musical in a 398-seat theatre rather than in Stratford’s main 1800-seat theatre. The experience is more intimate and allows the acting to be more detailed.

Douglas Paraschuk has created a two-storey set for the Shrew musical scenes and uses sliding panels to effect quick changes to the off-stage scenes when we see the actors as actors. Rachel Berchtold’s costumes contrast stereotypical stage Renaissance costumes used in the Shrew musical with the late 1940s outfits worn by the actors when not onstage. Berchtold has given Lilli a number of haute couture ensembles that emphasize the high opinion she has of herself.

Michael Lichtefeld, who has directed and choreographed eleven musicals for Drayton, and choreographed six on Broadway and nine off-Broadway, creates work pervaded with clarity and elegance. I found the plot clearer in this production of Kiss Me, Kate than ever before. Lichtefeld especially emphasizes that Lilli, if she marries the vice-presidential hopeful Harrison Howell, will be forced to lead a far more restricted life with a far more controlling husband than ever was the case with Fred. Lichtefeld manages to work in a few digs at the misogynist views of current Republican vice presidential candidate that make us realize that the subject of Porter’s musical has not gone out of date. He also changes the language of Kate’s final song taken directly from Shakespeare, “I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple”, to gender-neutral language (“I Am Ashamed That People Are So Simple”) which better suits Porter’s satire of both men and women in the musical.

As usual, Lichtefeld knows how to suit his choreography to each musical number – here ranging from pseudo-Renaissance dance to Viennese waltz with tap, jazz and ballet along the way. He also knows how to build up the scale of his choreography through the action so that each number is not presented as a no-holds-barred finale as happens too often at Stratford. The result is that his choreography is always refreshing rather than hard-driven.

Lichtefeld has assembled an unbeatable cast. Eric Craig has a wonderfully resonant speaking and singing voice and it is quite easy for him to convey Fred Graham’s egocentricity by showing how pleased Fred is with how he sounds. Craig gives an impassioned account of “So In Love”, a soaring song crucial to understanding Fred’s true feelings.

Kaylee Harwood is excellent at portraying Lilli Vanessi as a spoiled diva, but, like Craig, she also suggests that beneath that façade is a person more passionate and hurt than Lilli would like to admit. Harwood’s acting as Katherine would suit any non-musical production of Shrew and her singing is a highlight of the show. Harwood triumphs in a comic song like “I Hate Men” and has rich, classically trained voice that impresses us with the Donizettian bel canto embellishments she added to the song. Together Craig and Harwood as Fred and Lilli generate the same kind of hatred-concealing-love dynamic as Shakespeare’s Beatrice and Benedick do in Much Ado about Nothing.

As Bill Calhoun/Lucentio, Cory Lingner proves he is a true triple-threat. He is a fine actor, he has a lovely golden voice and he is a fantastic dancer. Lichtefled gives Lingner the chance to showcase this last skill by giving Lingner a virtuoso tap solo in “Bianca” that he performs with such panache it drives the audience wild. Be sure to keep an eye out for any show featuring Lingner in future.

As not-so-dumb blonde Lois Lane/Bianca, Rachel Fairbanks is a treat. She puts across Lois’s signature song “Always True To You In My Fashion” with verve and powerful voice and as Bianca she demonstrates she can tap with the best of them in Lichtefeld’s complex dance sequence for “Tom, Dick, Or Harry”.

Kent Sheridan is suitably square-jawed and stone-faced as Harrison Howell, the military man Lilli plans to marry. The Porter song “From This Moment On” from 1950 was added to the musical’s revival in 1999 to give Howell and Lilli a duet. Lichtefeld keeps it and though Sheridan and Harwood sing it well, I still feel such an upbeat song does not really suit the character of Howell or the characters’ situation.

It is pleasure to see festival theatre stalwarts of the high calibre of Matthew Armet and Chad McFadden as Hortensio and Gremio especially since Lichtefeld has reconceived the musical’s big song-and-dance number “Too Darn Hot” primarily for Bill and his two pals from the show. The trio’s moves are precise and their singing blends perfectly.

I will confess that one of my main motivations for seeing this production was to see Eddie Glen and Neil Barclay as the two gangsters. I expected they would be great as the two Damon Runyonesque characters and they were. Lichtefeld has increased the comedy by giving the two contrasting personalities when they find themselves onstage forcing Lilli to perform at gunpoint. Glen’s Gangster #1 is delighted to find himself in front of an audience while Barclay’s Gangster #2 is paralyzed with stage fright. The duo’s big number “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” is hilarious especially given the deadpan delivery of the two. For the two encores Lightefeld has them change into American and then British song-and-dance-man outfits. They make the number a huge amount of fun and it is rightly reprised by the whole company after everyone takes their bows.

In short, Drayton’s production of Kiss Me, Kate is a joy. It would be good to have an accompanying ensemble of more than five, especially one including strings, but that loss has to be weighed against the benefit in intimacy. My hope is that Drayton decides to remount this production, ideally with the same cast, so that more people will have a chance to see it and so that I will have the chance to see it again.

Christopher Hoile

Photo: The ensemble in “Too Darn Hot”; Chad McFadden as Gremio, Matthew Armet as Hortensio, Rachel Fairbanks as Bianca and Cory Lingner as Lucentio; Eric Craig as Petruchio and Kaylee Harwood as Kate with ensemble; Eddie Glen as Gangster #1 and Neil Barclay as Gangster #2. © 2024 Cheryl Oudshoorn.

For tickets visit: www.draytonentertainment.com.