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By PAUL BRENNER
Cole Porter wrote his finest songs for
"Kiss Me Kate," the great 1948
Broadway musical starring Alfred Drake and Patricia Morison. But when it closed
on Broadway it never regained the luster of the original production. George
Sidney's MGM 3-D musical version with Howard Keel was (except for some sizzling
musical numbers by Ann Miller and Bob Fosse) mostly a disaster (Sidney even
added a horrible prelude with a jokey David Wayne look-alike playing Cole Porter
himself).
The musical was relegated to stock companies and high school productions until
the successful Broadway revival of 2000 with Brian Stokes Mitchell and Marin
Mazzie. It is this production with its London cast that Image has now released
on DVD. The best thing to say about it is that it generally recaptures the
original Sam and Bella Spewack book from the 1948 original. What's missing is
the smartness, the zip, and the fun of the show. What replaces it is a deadly
cocktail of smarminess, cuteness, and smugness that makes a fan of Broadway
musical classics want to strangle anyone within grasping distance of his cold,
dead hands. Rachel York makes for a passable -- if shrill -- Lilli Vanessi. But
Brent Barrett as impresario Fred Graham is a bland amalgam of Howard Keel and
Robert Goulet, completely lacking the royal slyness of Alfred Drake in the
original production. And as usually happens with television productions of
Broadway musicals, the director (Chris Hunt, adapting the show from Michael
Blakemore's Tony-winning stage direction) has no sense of capturing the
choreography by simply keeping the camera still (see "Fosse" for a flagrant
example of opportunities lost).
Not only do productions like this make one cringe, but it also instills a
tremendous desire to grab the DVD, smoking out the person responsible for
ruining a great show, and sticking it up his Coriolanus. |
