| We’ve
gathered an impressive array of stars to bring this wonderful, award-
winning musical straight to you from Broadway. Russell Rinker,
Thomasin Savaiano, Christine Albright, Chris LoDuca, James Laster,
Richard Rella, Richard Follett, Summer Wronge, and Scott Ruble are
just a few who will dance and sing their way into your hearts.
Featuring the hits of Cole Porter and the hilarious book by Sam and
Bella Spewack, Kiss Me Kate continues to knock ‘em dead with the
tale of two star crossed theatre lovers as they mount a new musical
version of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew. One great Cole Porter
hit after another pours musical delights across the footlights.
Wunderbar, So In Love, Why Can’t You Behave, Always True to You (In
My Fashion), Brush Up Your Shakespeare and I Hate Men, are just a few
of the popular standards you’ll remember from this classic Broadway
fare, served up in only the way (con’t on page 3) that Wayside
Theatre and Artistic Director Warner Crocker can bring it to you.
Kiss Me Kate first opened on Broadway
in 1948 and became Cole Porter’s biggest hit. The book by Sam and
Bella Spewack based the story of the divorced and dueling divas, Fred
Graham and Lilli Vanessi on the famous acting couple Alfred Lunt and
Lynn Fontaine.
True or not, the original featured
Alfred Drake and Patricia Morrison as the bickering leads and Lisa
Kirk and Harold Lang as the younger couple, Lois and Bill.
But it wasn’t an easy road to Show
Biz Success for Kiss Me Kate. Bella Spewack at first couldn’t
convince Cole Porter to tackle “The Shrew.” He protested that his
style was incompatible with Shakespeare and believed there was limited
commercial potential in such a project. At the time, suffering from a
series of flops and also from considerable pain caused by a horseback
injury that took the use of his legs, Porter remained as adamant as
Spewack remained dogged.
She finally convinced him to join the
project and he completed much of the score in three months time, and
Kiss Me Kate was born.
Well, almost. It seems Bella Spewack,
who often wrote with her husband, Sam Spewack, as well as on her own,
needed some fine tuning with the book. She convinced Sam to help out
and he agreed to do so without a credit, but when the show opened on
Broadway, his name appeared first in the credits. Fast forward through
many productions professional, community, college and the like to
1999, when the latest revival that is still playing on Broadway hit
the Great White Way. |
info@waysidetheatre.org