24th Jun2018

Kiss Me Kate

by timbaros

A scene from Kiss Me Kate by Cole Porter @ Grand Theatre, Leeds. An Opera North and Welsh National Opera Production. Conductor, James Holmes. Directed by Jo Davies. (Opening 23-05-18) ©Tristram Kenton 05-18 (3 Raveley Street, LONDON NW5 2HX TEL 0207 267 5550 Mob 07973 617 355)email: tristram@tristramkenton.com

A revival of ‘Kiss Me Kate,’ the Cole Porter musical that’s been around for more than half a century, is now being performed at the London Coliseum for two weeks only.

Taking over the space which was briefly occupied by the show ‘Chess,’ ‘Kiss Me Kate’ takes a musical look, of the misconstrued shenanigans that take place behind the scenes of a musical. For a show that’s two hours and 50 minutes long, that’s quite a long haul to get from the beginning of the story to the end, and in the middle it’s all a bit of silliness and nonsense.
The cast within the show are performing ‘The Taming of the Shrew,’ and ‘Kiss Me Kate’ has as it’s plot the conflict between the show’s stars Fred (Quirijn De Lang) and leading lady Lilli (Stephanie Corley) – who used to be married, and Lois (Zoe Rainey) and her gangster boyfriend Bill (Alan Burkitt).
Fred writes a love letter intended for Lois, but it’s Lilli who receives it. Lilli is actually engaged to someone else but is actually still in love with Fred. Meanwhile, Bill has signed an IOU to gangsters, in Fred’s name, and the gangsters come to the show to retrieve their money. But it’s Lilli who ends up paying for it as when she reads the note and sees it’s not actually for her, she wants to leave the show, but the gangsters (John Savournin and Joseph Shovelton) prevent her from leaving so that they can get their money from Fred (who is also the producer of the show). All this leads, as you can image, to lots of mayhem and madness – cue the laughter.
‘Kiss Me Kate’ is not really well-known for any memorable songs nor as a really great musical (‘Oklahoma’ is ‘Kiss Me Kate’s’ contemporary, and it’s a classic). While all the actors soldierly slog through such a long show and sing their hearts out in a show that’s more operatic and less razzle dazzle, it’s a bit difficult to keep one’s attention, especially when one of the final songs – ‘Brush Up Your Shakespeare’ – goes on and on and on, and is repeated endlessly. So if Cole Porter is your thing, then you have very limited time to catch this show. If he is not your thing,  it’s OK to give it a miss.
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24th Jun2018

Beirut (Theatre)

by timbaros

Rob Rees (L), Louisa Connolly-Burnahm (R) - Photo Credit Loranc SparsiA disease is wiping out the human race, and those unlucky enough to be positive will die a slow death. This is the premise of the hard-hitting and surreally erotic play ‘Beirut.’

‘Beirut,’ now playing at the Park Theatre, imagines what would happen, in New York City, where a disease is wiping out some of the population.  Meanwhile, one positive man called Torch (Robert Rees), and a negative woman called Blue (Louisa Connolly-Burnham), are in love with each other. How do they express their love? The disease is spread via bodily fluids – any fluids – including saliva, sweat, and kissing. So what do they do?
Torch lives in a small underground bunker, and Blue sneaks in to be with him. But she’s breaking the law; negatives are not allowed to be with positives, but they clearly love, and lust, for each other. The two gutsy actors spend all of the time in the play (60 minutes) in their underwear, or sometimes less, but it’s not sexy, it’s hard-hitting, with raw intensity both actors convey in the emotions their characters are going through. Torch will definitely die and Blue will almost certainly live, that’s if she doesn’t give in and contract the disease from Torch.
The backstory to this play has to be mentioned. It was written by Alan Browne, from San Francisco, in the mid 1980’s, at the height of the AID’s crisis when gay men were dropping like flies. It was first performed at the Bay Area Playwrights Festival in 1986, and three years later Browne would die of the disease himself, at the age of 44. So we can assume that the unmentioned disease Browne alludes to is AIDS.
But since Browne’s original intention was to not write a story about HIV and AIDS (perhaps he thought the future was going to be just like the plot of his play), it, in my opinion, would work much better as a play about that dreadful disease. However, it still is a brutal in-your-face show that is perhaps not as relevant now as when it was written, but it still makes for explosive, and well-acted, theatre.
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