The most exciting moment in this fourth Broadway production of Cole Porter’s backstage musical riffing on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew comes at the top of Act II, when the cast at first languidly sings “Too Darn Hot” but then quickly throws themselves into Warren Carlyle’s warp-speed choreography – simultaneously old-fashioned and eye-catching, gymnastic, aerial – featuring a tap-dancing Corbin Bleu demonstrating why he is one of the great song-and-dance men of his generation.
I was thrilled. I was impressed. But I also couldn’t help thinking: If it’s so hot, why are they moving around so much?
It was a silly question, but it offered a clue to why, even in its most entertaining moments, I had trouble fully embracing this Kiss Me Kate….Roundabout’s “Kiss Me Kate” asks us to put aside our intellect, and just yield to our endorphins, in a way that the other recent revivals of problematic Golden Age musicals My Fair Lady and Carousel, did not demand of us.
Full review on DC Theatre Scene
Click on any photograph by Joan Marcus to see it enlarged.
