New Musical in Manhattan

Kiss Me, Kate (music & lyrics by Cole Porter; book by Bella & Sam Spewack; produced by Arnold Saint Subber & Lemuel Ayers) was 1948's last new show, and by far its best musical. It is only a musical, and not, like Oklahoma!, a milestone as well. But if nothing about it is revolutionary, everything is right. Full-blooded and sassy and enormously gay, Kiss Me, Kate can brag about its music at least, without blushing for its book; it looks pretty, moves fast, is full of bright ideas and likable people.

Shakespeare and show business divide the burden in Kiss Me, Kate, which has to do with the out-of-town opening of a production of The Taming of the Shrew. The pair who play Katharine and Petruchio were once stormily married and are still snarlingly in love, and the cuffing and spitting in their performances are more intense than Shakespeare's script requires. With a sharp eye, Kiss Me, Kate kids Shakespeare and show business impartially; and whenever the taming threatens to become too tame, out pops a dancer or up strikes the band.

Hanya Holm's dances are smart, brisk, Broadwayish--no Art whatever and a vast amount of skill; and Dancer Harold Lang and Singer Lisa Kirk take care of the subplot in style. In the leading roles, Hollywood's Patricia Morison proves to be right at home on Broadway, and Alfred Drake stands forth as the best all-round musicomedy hero in show business.

What really makes a topnotch musical of Kiss Me, Kate is Cole Porter's score. If no one of its tunes equals Begin the Beguine or Get a Kick Out of You, all 17 of them have their good points, and together form a sort of triumphal procession. They range from the slow torching of So in Love Am I to the fast jive of Too Darn Hot, from the musical brio of We Open in Venice to the verbal lift of Always True to You (In My Fashion). And again & again melody and mockery go hand in hand--nowhere better than in Wunderbar, a charming bit of schmalz--and a devilish parody of it.

Broadway had begun to wonder when Cole Porter's next smash was coming; Kiss Me, Kate marks an interval of five years and two flops since his last hit show (Mexican Hayride). In the barren interval he also had to endure a film biography, Night and Day, of which he said: "It ought to be good because none of it is true."

Born in Peru, Ind., 56-year-old Yale-man Porter has commuted for years between show business and the showiest international society. A riding accident broke both his legs in 1938, but, having gritted through 30 operations, he can now get around without a cane. Among his hit musicals: Fifty Million Frenchmen, Gay Divorce, Anything Goes, Jubilee, Red Hot and Blue. Having launched what may prove his biggest hit, he plans a new show for the same producers in the fall--but first he will motor on the Continent and cruise in the Mediterranean.

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