The Welsh National Opera’s production of Kiss Me Kate which LANS attended earlier this month was one of the most fun and unexpected shows I have seen.
Having never watched the show before, and knowing very little about it, I went into the performance not knowing what to expect. For the first quarter of an hour or so I didn’t really know what to make of it and found the acting over the top and the pace a little slow. However, once I settled into the show it was fantastic. The mix of hilariously crude humour, fantastic ensemble dance scenes and some surprisingly touching moments between the lead cast members, made it a thoroughly enjoyable show- not to mention the extensive and lavish, operatic solos which punctuated the performance.
The feature of the show which I enjoyed the most was, without a doubt, the tap solo from Alan Burkitt (playing Bill, the drunkard boyfriend of young starlet, Louis Lane). The pace and skill of the dance was breath taking and utterly captured the audience.
The play within a play element of Kiss Me Kate is also part of the fun (and confustion!) of the production and the relationship between Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew and Kiss Me Kate’s retelling of it is very interesting. Discussing the play afterwards with other LANS students, we noted how difficult it is for someone with our modern values of gender equality to accept the ‘moral’ of the tale told in the Taming of the Shrew- which is essentially that a women should change herself into a quiet, submissive and obedient in order to be acceptable to a man. I felt that the production left it slightly ambiguous where they came down on the issue; however Kate’s dominant attitude towards Fred (or Petruchio- his character in The Taming of the Shrew) in the final scene and during the cast’s bows, made me think that the show condemned the outdated attitude towards women which it had shown.
As Cassidy put it,
“Although the ending of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew felt a bit out of place with the modern setting of Kiss Me Kate, and doesn’t sit that well with contemporary attitudes, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the production.”
All in all it was an excellent production of Cole Porter’s classic musical, with a fantastic leading cast and extremely strong chorus!
“It was great, it wasn’t what I expected at all. It was very funny, the two gangsters made it. I’d never been to an opera before so I didn’t know what to expect, but it was a very modern play and wasn’t traditionally operatic. Very enjoyable, 10/10 would recommend to a friend”
Miriam, second year LANS student.
”I loved Kiss Me Kate. It was very different to the Marriage of Figaro that we went to last year – more of a musical/opera cross. It was properly laugh out loud funny, from the moment a pigeon got shot out of the sky to the lyrics of Brush up your Shakespeare.”
Cassidy, second year LANS student