Kiss Me Kate

A very cold night in February saw us attending at the St. Mary’s Centre for Clitheroes main show of 2013, Kiss Me Kate.  With raked seating installed the place had the feel of a professional theatre and indeed this professionalism was reflected throughout the performance.

Kiss Me Kate is an unusual show in so far as there are effectively two performances going on at once.  The back story is that the Baltimore Players are staging a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ (only in America!) and the after effects of what happens in the dressing room spills over onto the stage in the actual performance, making for a complex and hard to follow storyline.  Clitheroe were able to portray this exceptionally well however and Director David Hulme had worked hard to make the story easy to follow

The set was excellent, with good use being made of various revolving pieces of scenery to recreate both backstage and out front scenes, costumes were also very well presented and perfect for the period setting.  The lighting was very good and innovative making the most of intelligent fixtures and conventional lighting and scene changes were swift and didn’t cause unnecessary delays between scenes.  This society have the luxury of dedicated dancers (don’t we all wish this were so!) and Chorographer Lindsay Pollard had slotted these in to great effect throughout the show, particularly the opening of Act 2 ‘Too Darn Hot’ which was excellent .  I was most impressed with the performance of Kane Taylor in this routine, excellent singing and dance throughout this number.

The Orchestra sounded superb under the expert hand of Chris Andrews and Brian Webster and his team kept the sound balance just right.

The leads in this production were taken by Bethany Clews and Damian Marsh as ex-husband and wife Lilli Vanessi and Fred Graham.  Bethany played the part very well, showing lovely diction and superb singing.  Damian took on the challenging role of Fred and played the part well, although I’m not sure that he was entirely comfortable in this particular role.  Despite this, he worked hard with some nice vocals to boot.

Matt Wilkinson played the part of Bill Calhoun, again working hard throughout the performance and with very believable stage presence.  His foil Lois Lane was played with aplomb by Katie Cowburn, an excellent interpretation of the character and lovely vocals, particularly ‘Always True to You in my Fashion’, my favourite song from this particular performance.

Kane Taylor and Leo Burke played well as Flynt and Riley and Richard Hubbard delivered a very believable General Howell.  Other supporting parts were taken by Trevor Lord, Samantha Smith, Barry Phillips and Bob Gleeve; all performed very well and gave colour to the production.

The parts of the ‘Two Men’ (read gangsters) were taken by Brian Howarth and Tom Garner.  Very entertaining, particularly the ‘Brush up Your Shakespeare’ routine.  The supporting chorus were very strong with some very lively production numbers, so well done to all.

This was an enjoyable show and with an almost capacity audience on a Tuesday night, clearly very popular.  Well done to Clitheroe for an entertaining evening.

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