Kiss Me Kate
Quintessence Theater
7137 Germantown Ave.
Philadelphia
Dec. 7, 2024
In the middle of Cole Porter’s famed musical Kiss Me, Kate, an actor angry with his co-star starts spanking her on stage, playing it off as a pre-planned part of the production. When I saw a staging of the show at Quintessence Theater, I was jarred by an apparent act of intimate partner violence — until I heard how hard the crowd laughed.
Kiss Me, Kate is a meta musical about a play within a play that explores the intimacies and frustrations of show business. While some of its more sexist jokes have gone out of style since the musical’s release in 1948, the play is a testament to the permanent resonance of theater — even as the number of people turning out to see live performance art these days dwindles.
I have been to several shows at Quintessence that interrogate the value of modernizing the classics. I saw a queered rendition of Macbeth and a take on Cyrano that brought female fixation Roxanne into the protagonist seat. So I was intrigued by the theater’s decision to play Kiss Me, Kate straight — meaning without any edits to make the show more accessible, entertaining or relatable for a modern audience. That spanking scene, for example, is performed as an exaggerated, I-Love-Lucy-type fight between ex-lovers; the live band punctuates every slap to the actress’ back through lively percussion.
Still, Quintessence's Playbill included an essay arguing why the show — which is inspired by Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew and features a full monologue from the original play about a woman’s place between all kinds of glamorous, Golden Age song and dance numbers — remains relevant: “Even with the most problematic or complex plots, theatre can bridge the most impossible gaps and lead to new ways of thinking about old problems… We need theatre, and no show understands this better than Kiss Me, Kate.”
That’s because Kiss Me, Kate is an experimental exploration of theatrical players’ relationship to the industry — and to each other. The show follows a cast of characters’ behind the scenes and on stage during a messy production of Taming of the Shrew. When ex-spouses Lilli Vanessi and Fred Graham find out they’ve been cast in the same show, chaos ensues; as the play within the play runs on, the tension between its actors grows, and the cast’s personal lives and histories are brought to the foreground. Vanessi nearly decides to leave the theater, and her costar, to pursue a career in politics before ultimately returning to both him and the show, symbolizing the inextricable link between love and everything that theater stands for: Creativity, vulnerability, and true intimacy.
I was less interested in the lovers' journey, which in my opinion fell flat, than I was by the shared passion for theater underlying the cliché romantic plot line. The behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to put on a play — and all that can go wrong without the audience’s knowledge — offers some slapstick comedy that hits hard in an era of perfectionism-obsessed art. Preoccupied dancers forget to cheat out, instead spinning and leaping to quickly correct their error. A robotic bird serenaded by Vanessi explodes in mid air; two civilians are shoved in wigs and trousers and plopped on stage; Lilli and Fred get into an all-out brawl in front of a live audience. The fourth wall is broken when actors helplessly look to us, the audience, during moments of mayhem. The absurdity of the “play within the play” script structure allows the audience to suspend its disbelief as the campy comedy continues into unlikely extremes. The musical pokes fun at itself and the industry in a way that invites the audience in — instead of taking them for granted.
Kiss Me, Kate gives the audience a chance to be a part of the inner workings of theater and to participate more directly in the fantasies drafted by artists on and off stage. It is perhaps the perfect musical to bring back during a time when theater tickets can feel both out of fashion and ruled by the rich. It’s no incident that TKTS has come to Philly this month to lure more people into theaters with the offer of discounted tickets.
I was raised by an actress and a clown who run a small non-profit theater and local arts organization. Before its inception they worked for a theater school specializing in physical comedy. It was their former teachers, mentors and peers who helped my parents build their own theater. The connectivity, across oceans, of people who care about and believe in in-person, live storytelling is a marvel to me. I love that Kiss Me, Kate gives audiences a taste of that feeling.
It also reminds me that we as audience members contribute more to the art form than we realize — in no other medium do live audience reactions play such a key role in the show’s success. When I was a kid, one of my parents’ friends taught me an important lesson: We are only given a handful of standing ovations in our lives, and we have to use them carefully.
So as everyone stood in unanimity to applaud the performance, I sat firmly in place. Philosophically speaking, the show worked — it just didn’t move me in any particular way that would merit such a sacred response. I remain on the hunt for those special occasion standing ovations. Would you like to join me?
Kiss Me Kate is playing through Jan. 5. Buy tickets here.
