At the out-of-town try-out of a new musical version of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew, sparks fly on stage and off as sparring between the co-stars threatens the opening night. In a classic show-within-a-show, over which loom two gun-toting gangsters with gambling debts to collect, Lilli and Fred’s romantic shenanigans offstage tangle with the onstage story of Kate and Petruchio as their two worlds dizzyingly collide.
Reviews
The Daily Mail
Quentin Letts
“Things start brightly with Another Op’nin, Another Show, the hoofers flashing tonsils and more. Grrrr. The old chaps of Chichester do love a long-thighed chorus line. Defibrillators on standby, house manager.”
29/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Times
Libby Purves
“It’s one of theatre’s great love songs to itself: to onstage energy and backstage bickering, song and dance and break-a-leg, egos and ensemble, sweaty tights and Shakespeare. Add to that director Trevor Nunn’s long love affair with both the American musical and the Bard, the swoonably brilliant Cole Porter songs, the perennial theme of warring couples, and Chichester’s talent for pizzazz on the big stage, and it could hardly fail. It certainly doesn’t. ”
28/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Independent on Sunday
Claudia Pritchard
“Above all there is melting Jason Pennycooke, who brings "Too Darn Hot" at the start of Act 2, steamily choreographed by Stephen Mear, to scorchio, knowingly doling out oodles of feelgood Factor 30. Not everything is this well cooked ... Humour overall is thinnish – see Martin Ball in Top Hat for a masterclass in getting real laughs out of leaden old lines, a challenge that most here fail. ”
08/07/2012
Read Full Review
The Daily Telegraph
Dominic Cavendish
“The production succeeds in balancing a necessary sense of artifice with an unforced quality of naturalness. The set-up scene shifts from a series of chaotic comings-and-goings to wave after wave of hoofing delight, with the company pulling together and building up a head of steam like a thundering locomotive.”
28/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Evening Standard
Henry Hitchings
“Hannah Waddingham is Lilli Vanessi, a glam Hollywood star playing Kate in The Shrew. At first Lilli seems haughty and severe. Gradually she shows more complexity. When she sings “I Hate Men” we hear the full textural range of Waddingham’s voice. She’s amusing too — though in truth comedy is something the production could do with a little more of.”
28/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Daily Express
Neil Norman
“Nunn goes for broke from the start with opening number Another Op’nin, Another Show, blasting off the stage like a space shuttle. Choreographer Stephen Mear delivers several superb big set pieces that combine old-school Broadway hoofing with contemporary moves. ”
29/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Financial Times
Antony Thorncroft
“Kiss Me, Kate is the ultimate Broadway musical from the golden age, but with well justified pretension. The boisterous first and second act openers, “Another Op’nin, Another Show” and “Too Darn Hot”, demand full-throated, high-kicking bravura, and they get them here. The love songs are charming. Even the Shakespearean dialogue in the Shrew scenes, which can slow things down, seem relevant. The only real criticism is the lack of a grand finale to get the audience on its feet.”
02/07/2012
Read Full Review
The Guardian
Michael Billington
“A show that looks handsome in Robert Jones's pastiche commedia designs, and that, thanks to Nunn, gives Porter's scintillating numbers a precise emotional context. ”
28/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Stage
Mark Shenton
“Far from it being comfortable ground for Nunn, he approaches it with the tentative unease of a mash-up between the proper reverence due to Shakespeare and the irreverence of its portrait of backstage life and the way it (self) consciously seems to be imitating the art it is portraying, as two actors - who divorced a year earlier - now play the warring couple of Shakespeare’s play.”
28/06/2012
Read Full Review
The Observer
Susannah Clapp
“It could be called Trevolution: that peculiar pace at which a Nunn show unwinds. At its best it brings a long array of new detail. At its worst it's sluggish and wit-dispelling. Kiss Me Kate is Nunn at his worst. Cole Porter's terrific music and dextrous, startling rhymes can both leaven and expose that most arid of Shakespeare's plays on which it is based. Not in this production, which adds facetiousness to the disagreeableness of The Taming of the Shrew.”
01/07/2012
Read Full Review