Kiss Me, Kate

Music and Lyrics by Cole Porter
Book by Sam and Bella Spewack

Performed
August 10-13, 16-20, 2005
at
The Boal Barn Playhouse

Production Staff

Director	Elaine Meder-Wilgus
Music Director	Jo Henry
Scenic Designer	Elaine Meder-Wilgus
Costume Designer	Laurie A. Caplan
Choreographer	Jill A. Brighton
Lighting Designer	Jason Zanitsch
Technical Director	Elaine Meder-Wilgus
Stage Manager	Erin Albrecht

About the Show

The Cole Porter musicals of the 1940s -Let’s Face It, Something for the Boys, Mexican Hayride- were not vintage Porter shows. One of them, Around the World in Eighty Days (1946) with a book by Orson Welles, was a bomb. It folded in a few weeks. So much, then, was riding on the next Porter musical, Kiss Me, Kate (1948). Had the new kind of musical -Oklahoma!, Carousel- passed Porter by? Was he washed up? Not to worry. Kiss Me, Kate was his biggest hit and longest run -107 performances- and probably his best musical score. The book by Bella and Sam Spewack, loosely based on Shakespeare’s Taming of The Shrew, is clever. We watch the tryout in Baltimore of a musical based on Shrew and are also backstage of the musical watching the tempestuous relationship between stars Fred Graham and Lilli Vanessi (based on Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne and their production of Shrew with its backstage fights which parallel what is going on onstage). If the book doesn’t always hold together and has holes in it – no matter. The show is fun and the score is great.

A personal note: of the more than 50 roles I have performed for SCCT, way up on my list of favorites is the Second Man in Kate. Wearing tights and singing “Brush Up Your Shakespeare”, who could ask for anything more?

Richard B. Gidez

The Cast

Fred Graham/Petruchio	David Saxe
Lilli Vanessi/Kate	Laura Saxe
Lois Lane/Bianca	Eva Heppelmann
Bill Calhoun/Lucentio	Eric Mollo
Hattie	Amelia McGinnis
Paul	Ken Wozetek
Hortensio	Eric Brinser
Gremio	Michael Waldhier
First Gangster	William Daniel Daup
Second Gangster	J. Thomas Pogue
Harry/Baptista	Rob Arnold
Ralph, the Stage Manager	Lynn Donald Breon
Dance Captain/Gregory	Mike Hill
Props/ the Stage doorman	G. Eric McGinnis
Wardrobe Lady	Laura Stocker-Waldhier
The General	Mike Twomley
Stagehand/Phillip	Marshall Anderson
Stagehand/Cabbie/Nathaniel	Mark Comly
Stagehand/Haberdasher/Driver	Andrew Kankey
Ensemble	Kirstin A. Kapustik Katie Brown Timothy Cole Courtney Kaufman Danya Kotak Samantha Melonas Adrianna Shembel