In honor of Valentine’s Day, here are Broadway plays about love dating back to 1750,  photographs of stage kisses dating back to 1887, and recaps of some of my love and kisses posts dating back to 2012.

Stage Kisses: When a Kiss is Not A Kiss

The same-sex kiss in The Prom is just the latest dramatic moment on stage involving the artful locking of lips. Much theater has revolved around a kiss, certainly in the title: Kiss Me Kate (a Broadway revival of which begins previews today!), Kiss of the Spider Woman, Kiss and Tell, The Kiss Burglar — 26 titles on Broadway alone. Stage Kiss, Sarah Ruhl’s 2014 Off-Broadway play, begins with the actress about to begin rehearsal; turning to her co-star, she asks whether he would mind if they would actually kiss: “You look young, I don’t want to traumatize you.”

Stage kisses are different enough from off-stage kisses as to require guidance, judging by How To Stage Kiss (Set ground rules, pay attention to hygiene, make sure you know your lines) and Tell and Kiss: A Manual for Actors (Boundaries—to tongue or not to tongue: For me, this is an easy one: open mouth, no tongue…. Make sure your makeup won’t rub off on your partner. ..Use good sense. Be respectful. Speak up for yourself.”)

Click on any photograph to see it enlarged and learn who is kissing whom and in what, e.g. Elizabeth Taylor kisses John Culllum in Private Lives in 1983, and Tallulah Bankhead kisses Donald Cook in Private Lives in 1948. Sydney Chaplin kisses Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, 1964. Faith Prince kisses Nathan Lane in Guys and Dolls in 1992. Caitlin Kinnunen kisses Isabelle McCalla in The Prom in 2018.

Annie Scott as Rosemary Pillkington kisses Robert Morse as J. Pierrepont Finch, as Rudy Vallee as the boss looks on shocked in How to Succeed in Business without really Trying 1961

The re-enactment of the same-sex kiss from The Prom at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 2018 mock-shocked Christopher Sieber (left.)

Ben Whishaw and Hugh Dancy kiss in The Pride, 2010

Ivan Hernandez and Bobby Steggert in Yank, 2010.

Adina Verson and Katrina Lenk In “Indecent,” 2017. Paula Vogel’s play tells the story of the hundred-year-old Yiddish play that featured the first Lesbian kiss on Broadway. The actors playing the troupe keep on referring to the kiss as “the rain scene.” When we finally see the rain scene, it’s not so much the kiss as the rain that overwhelms us.

Jessica Hecht and Dominic Fumusa in Stage Kiss, 2014

Unidentified show and actors

Trixie Friganza as Mrs. Waxtapper and George Beban as Pierre Souchet in The American Idea 1908

Francesca da Rimini. Act V, Scene I, 1887

Louis Gossett as Willie Nurse and Cicely Tyson as Myrna Jessup in Carry Me Back to Morningside Heights 1968

Stubby Kaye as Pooch Kearney, Alice Faye as Professor Kenyon, and John Payne as Bill Johnson in Good News 1974

Donald Cook and Tallulah Bankhead in Private Lives 1948

Has there ever before been such a touching love scene between poultry? In The Year of the Rooster, by Eric Dufault, a young rooster named Odysseus Rex, played by Bobby Moreno like an angry punk with a knife, is introduced to Lucky Lady (Megan Tusing), a hen genetically engineered by McDonald’s to be twice her normal weight, and so virtually unable to stand. At first they don’t get along. He’s all…well…cocky. She behaves in a way that explains where the phrase “hen-pecked” comes from. But swiftly she is able to reach inside his chest and remove the anger he says is there, shaped like an anvil. They kiss, like the French (like birds!), cheek to cheek, and snuggle.

Elizabeth Taylor and John Cullum, Private Lives 1983

Actors Richard Burton & Elizabeth Taylor in a publicity shot for the Broadway production of the play “Private Lives.”

A 21st century musician kisses a 20th century explorer in Ernest Shackleton Loves Me, 2017

Most Romantic Theatrical Experience

When asked for their most romantic experience, many theatergoers picked “Phantom of the Opera, but Lourdes Pagan picked Pippin and, after hearing her story, it was hard to disagree. She went to the original Broadway production with a co-worker. He reached for her hand, “and held it for the whole show.
“That was just the beginning,” she recalled in 2013. “It was a little like Romeo and Juliet. My father didn’t like him; his mom didn’t like me.
“We have been married for 35 years. We had two sons and are now grandparents And our parents said it wouldn’t last.”

Love Lessons from the Stage

Can theater teach us anything about love? Yes, answered theatergoers, theater artists, and theater critics in 2012, with some intriguing choices.  Monica Bauer said she learned about love from “Death of A Salesman.” “It taught me that love survives even after respect is gone: Biff will always love Willy, as Willy loved Biff.”

Theater as Love Song

Some Love Songs in Musical Theater

One Hand, One Heart from West Side Story

It Only Takes A Moment from Hello Dolly

Bess You Is My Woman Now from Porgy and Bess

Falling Slowly from Once

Never Ever Getting Rid of Me from Waitress

Always True To You In My Fashion from Kiss Me Kate

Seasons of Love from Rent

Do You Love Me from Fiddler on the Roof

Somewhere from West Side Story

“Love” on Broadway

A list of Broadway shows, alphabetically, that have “love” in the title, more than 200 in all. The earliest is “Love for Love” by William Congreve in 1750, a play that popularized the line “you must not kiss and tell,” and that has been revived on Broadway six times, most recently in 1974. Title in 2015, when this was put together, included Living on Love and Fool for Love. Best titles: “Love in a Coffee Cup,” “Love and Libel,” “Love Laughs,” “Love Kills.”…The longest-running show on Broadway with “love” in the title was: “I Love My Wife,” the Cy Coleman musical from the 1970s, which ran for 857 performances.  Five were performed only once. “Love” doesn’t always last, but it never ends.