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by music and lyrics by John R. Briggs & Dennis West, book by John R. Briggs, directed by John R. Briggs

Musical Bard, Winter Garden Theatre, Toronto

June 21-July 15, 2000

“Not Kiss Me, Kate”

Musical Bard’s production of “Romancin’ the One I Love” started life as a musical called “Shrew” at the Georgia Shakespeare Festival in 1993.  After several successful regional productions and two changes of title, it has now made its way up North.  It is faux 1939 musical based on Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew” adapted by John R. Briggs with songs by him and the late Dennis West.  The easiest way for a critic to dismiss this show is to ask,”Did they never hear of ‘Kiss Me Kate’?”  On reflection, one realizes that the older world of opera has long tolerated at least two operas based on “The Merry Wives of Windsor” (Nicolai’s and Verdi’s) and two on “Manon Lescaut” (Puccini’s and Massenet’s) and that even the younger world of musicals has seen two based on “Martin Guerre” (Schönberg’s and Leslie Arden’s), and we should assume more duplications will follow.

       

John R. Briggs and Cole Porter’s versions are different enough.  Porter’s primarily concerned with the backstage antics that parallel the onstage performance pieces based on “Shrew”.  Briggs’s version uses an abbreviated form of Shakespeare’s actual text with musical interludes while updating the action to 1939 Miami and New York.  The effect of hearing Shakespeare after the opening song-and-dance number is bizarre, but one does get used to it.  So the real question is “If you are going to shorten and rearrange the text to make space for the musical numbers and update it to fit your new time and place, why keep the text at all?” 

       

For this there’s no clear answer, especially in light of John R. Briggs’s direction.  Hardly a line goes by without some bit of unnecessary shtick--the band adding cartoon-like sound effects, actors imitating Cary Grant, Groucho Marx and James Cagney (as if anyone thought that was still funny), lots of crotch-directed slapstick, etc.  Now it’s not as if the American director is alone in schlocking up this play.  Just think of Richard Rose’s 1997 production at Stratford updated to 1950s New York, spoken in New York accents and including a guest appearance, for no particular reason, by Marilyn Monroe.  In both cases, the impression is that the director does not think the text itself is funny enough.  The problem is that this mistrust of the text is communicated to the audience no matter how many would-be funny bits the director adds in. 

       

Briggs’s trivializing direction is all the more the pity since the producers for this show have come up with cast exploding with talent.  It’s one of the few casts I’ve seen who can sing and dance and, if allowed, could have played Shakespeare’s comedy straight.  The two stars of the show are the Canadian Camilla Scott as Kate and the American Brad Aspel as Petruchio.  Scott is, of course, familiar to Toronto theatre-goers for her fine work as Polly in “Crazy for You” and more recently as the best thing about Simon Callow’s production of “The Pajama Game”.  She’s the kind of performer who always gives 100% no matter what the material and is able to establish an immediate rapport with an audience.  Aspel is the perfect match for her in this respect.  Whereas her forte is singing, his is dance which he makes seem as easy and natural as walking. 

The charm both exude helps make sense of Briggs’s refashioning of the plot where Kate actually falls in love with Petruchio so that the test of obedience at the end is their conscious ploy to dupe the folks back home.  Richard Rose used the same approach in 1997 and for the same reason--to defuse the play’s misogyny.  The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent: Canadians Melissa Thompson as Bianca, Paul Nolan as Lucentio, Derek Marshall as Tranio, Noah Henne as Biondello, Michael Fletcher as Baptista, Larry Mannell as Hortensio, Gerry Salsberg as Gremio and Vincentio, and American Lloyd Culbreath as Grumio. 

       

It is no surprise that this extraordinary cast shines when Briggs’s hokey direction yields to Canadian Sergio Trujillo’s exciting choreography.  Trujillo’s various interpretations of jive, swing and tango give the cast and the show verve and vitality.  While everyone has mastered Trujillo’s complex moves, the two Americans, Aspel and Culbreath, stand out as the tap-dance kings of the show.  Unfortunately, after each of the many high-energy numbers, we fall back into Briggs’s version of Shakespeare on a shtick. 

       

Dennis West’s imitation swing and blues music is often as good as the real thing, with the opening and closing numbers and “It’s a Tough Job” as standouts.  The 11-member band under the original conductor, Dale Grogan, has a glamorous big band sound.  But more often that not, West’s music is let down my Briggs’s banal and uninventive lyrics.  After all, the period when he has set the action prized cleverness in rhythm, vocabulary and rhyme (just think of the lyrics of Hart, Ira Gershwin or Wodehouse).  So if you’re going to make “Shrew” into an imitation 1939 musical, you’d better be at least as good as the originals--and Briggs is not.  In terms of lyrics, the lowpoint in the show inopportunely arrives in what is supposed to be its most emotional scene when Kate sings “Nobody Loves Me” and is overheard by Petruchio.  No matter how well, Camilla Scott sang it, the words came across as an especially sappy example of greeting-card verse. 

       

Average devotees of song-and-dance musicals will probably enjoy this show despite all the objections I’ve listed.  They will enjoy the handsome sets of the original designer, Dex Edwards, and the witty costumes of Canadian, Jennifer Triemstra.  It’s possible that those who don’t already know the play may find the complex plot hard to follow since it is rushed through as if it were a live-action cartoon.  Most people, however, would notice that the show does not build in cumulative energy like a good musical should because of alternation between the vitality of Trujillo’s song-and-dance sections and the staleness of Briggs’s sections of dialogue.  A different director and some song rewrites could make this a much more entertaining evening.  But with so many great early musicals that deserve reviving, I couldn’t help thinking while watching this ersatz swing musical how much I’d rather see this talented cast in, say,  Kern’s “Sitting Pretty”, Gershwin’s “Oh, Kay!” or Porter’s “Gay Divorce”. 

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: Brad Aspel and Camilla Scott. ©2000 Musical Bard.