15. Hellcats: “Kiss Me, Kate” reviewed by Louise Ebersdorf.
In the midst of revolution, the best ploy is to remain calm and appeal to a later date for return to order. I will be long-sighted, but A&P (Albertine and Paco) have attempted ugly rebellion. Observe, dear reader, my calm, my forbearance, my all-but-sublime patience in the face of bull-headed incontinence and damned anarchy. My choreographic discovery, Cheryl S., has done admirable work: she is rehearsing and refining the details of the video-dance she has made on the now-recalcitrant A&P. Even they must admit the girl’s artistry and my own brilliance at conceiving a Cat Demon subject for their video debut, realized by the most popular up-and-coming talent my money can buy. But when Cheryl’s friend and collaborator, Sandy, showed up one morning with his video equipment, ready to record a performance, A&P turned mutinous. Technology has a way of exacerbating ambition, like nettles beneath a Texas saddle.
In a sense, I’m glad because now we see where we all stand. My ambition is not only to use the video to test a possible revival of the Ebersdorf Ballet but also to have a certified American Cultural Artifact to send to Mr. Xu in Ürümqi. If the Chinese Belt and Road project is to have real cultural exchange opening up future world trade routes, here would be our corporate (WAT-SAS) contribution. After music and dance have opened the New Silk Road, the guns, the oil, the lapis, the talcum powder, the drugs, and the textiles can follow. A&P, of course, see the whole project in terms of immediate personal aggrandizement. Global issues are nothing to them. My resident short-sighters asked for separate interviews from behind my streel bars.
Paco was first. He wants to stage and then film his own version of The Legend of the Demon Cat, the Chen Kaige movie that opened in China in 2017 and never got a proper release here in the U.S. Paco claims that a dance-video is too meager to make an impression on the Chinese hordes, so he wants to go for mega-spectacle, first on stage and then on international screens. I pointed out that the Kaige film did not do as well as expected at the Chinese box office, but that did not faze Paco. In my talks with Pippa and Master Raro, they have insisted that the most respected Chinese director at the moment is Gan Bi, whose Last Night on Earth (re-titled Long Day’s Journey into Night for American release) revives neo-noir and 3D to put China back on the cinematic map. (We saw and admired his Kaili Blues back in 2016 when it was screened at the Metrograph in Chinatown.) Pippa now feels that video dance needs to create an equivalent type of dimensional film environment to be found in Gan Bi’s work, a mise-en-scène that is immersive for performer and audience, something like what Minnelli provided Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse in the Central Park locale for “Dancing in the Dark” in The Band Wagon. When I countered Paco’s argument with these ideas, he became so frustrated he almost cried. I can’t deal with an hysterical adult male, so I ended the interview abruptly. (Could his tears be from rage? Those little red bumps on his forehead distend when he is distressed. Not pretty.)
Next on the squall front, Albertine, my Captive, has her own idée fixe. She insists that Nipponese legend, like our folktale-derived Nekomata, is not enough to impress the Chinese because they look upon their own culture as the source of everything worthwhile in Japanese art and history, which is therefore by definition second-rate. Instead, Albertine wants me to implement her very own Dream Project and facilitate a transformation of Ballerina into Dramaturge. She has become obsessed with our U.S. legend of a Demon Cat inhabiting the bowels of the Capital Building in Washington, and she wants a ballet and an eventual motion picture in which she herself portrays said Demon. (Type-casting?) And here are the toppers. Albertine wants the spectral D.C. (got it?) to be discovered by a Rudy Guiliani lawyer-type on a visit to said bowels, who then reports the attack upon his venerable person to his boss, our very own embattled demagogue. In superhero fashion, Mr. President flashes his Captain America shield and descends into the Capital’s basement to do battle with any and all Demoncrats. And Albertine wants us to offer the role to President Trump in person! (Another short-sighter, what with his abiding insistence on international Great Walls rather than world trade.) Albertine claims that an American electorate watching Trump grab her Superpuss (this side of a sequel) will guarantee him an overwhelming victory for 2020, especially if we move fast. Talk about a cinematic Endgame! Albertine insists our hyperbolic Donald is sure to sign on for the ride. When I look doubtful, you should see the barely suppressed fury in A.’s eyes. If not a witch, she has no trouble filling the bill as one classic hellcat. But Louise Ebersdorf will not be intimidated.
I’ve gone over the Albertine concept with Pippa, and she agrees it could happen with our incumbent, given the state of American culture today and Trump’s histrionic ambitions. Master Raro is dubious. My Madame Sosostris says go for it. As she intoned, “There is always a whence and always a whither.” The downside is turning my two deplorables loose on a stateside project. I wanted to send them eventually on the long, long road to Xinjiang where the Commies will know what to do with them both big-time! If I agree to sponsor one of their own beloved projects, the upside is that the pair will have to agree to complete our current video-dance, and I’ll soon have something with which to interest the Chinese. As of now, my captives could go on permanent strike, and then I would have to explain the no-show to Cheryl S. and her charming Sandy. And to Mr. Xu. Nothing is easy.
For diversion, Pippa and Master and I went to see the current Roundabout Theater Company revival of Kiss Me, Kate. I usually avoid attempts to return us to yesterday’s A.M.C. (American Musical Comedy) classics: the bare texts may be there, but the spirit has skipped town. Ensemble style, ensemble style, where is it now? Totally dead? Director Scott Ellis and choreographer Warren Carlyle are not exactly working with actors and singers and dancers who are sensitive stylists, so what can you expect? At least the current musical director Paul Gemignani has made certain that the Cole Porter score is mostly intact.
The original production of Kiss Me, Kate was beautifully designed by Lemuel Ayers, a Broadway and Hollywood veteran, and the Shakespearean scenes were smart, with a touch of 1940s chic. At Studio 54, the set design by David Rockwell falls back on children’s book cutouts (for “We Opened in Venice”) and a particularly bare backstage setting. The costumes by Jeff Mahshie don’t try for chic. (Where is fashion chic in 2019? And how to blend 1940s ghost fashions with Elizabethan and 2019 threads?) Carlyle’s choreography is standard-issue, with two exceptions. The production is not misconceived, like the recent Jack O’Brien Carousel. It turns calculated avoidance into a substitute for style by toning down the “re-education” of the character Kate in the name of today’s anti-patriarchal sentiments.
The two reasons to see the production are Kelli O’Hara for her vocal skills in the role of Katherine/Lilli Vanessi and Corbin Bleu for his dance sequences as Bill Calhoun/Lucentio. O’Hara does justice to the act one “So in Love” and delivers a mean kick in the courting scenes. In act two, Bleu rescues “Too Darn Hot” from its usual lethargy and comes fully alive in the “Bianca” number. I have always loved the placement of this gentle song-and-dance toward the end of the show since it illustrates the formal flexibility of A.M.C., able to switch from serious to light-hearted in an off-beat. (It was originally a tribute to Harold Lang’s ample dance talent.) A.M.C. is our native pop-baroque art, and too many audiences today want something simple and pat for their entertainment. Their loss. And ours.
There are two disappointing performances. Stephanie Styles as Lois Lane/Bianca uses a grating dumb-broad voice that flattens the comedy in the modern scenes and obscures the lyrics (Porter’s lyrics!). And Will Chase’s Fred Graham/Petruchio doesn’t have the veneer of class the role requires. This show deals with a veteran show business couple like Lunt-Fontanne or Olivier-Leigh. Chase lacks the ability to luxuriate guiltlessly in the likerish extravagance of his Shakespearean scenes and solos. He resorts to low physical comedy, thus reducing real wit and suave threat in those bouts with Kate-Lilli.
Changing the original language of “I am ashamed that women are so foolish” to “that people are so foolish” doesn’t begin to apologize for the patriarchal heart of Shakespeare’s comedy. Why mount Kiss Me, Kate if you are so sensitive to P.C. issues? Female performances suffer if you simplify a demonstration of just how central the theme of a necessary “taming” of the female psyche remains in our culture. And some comediennes are able to use the anti-female component to launch their performances into a higher form of stage characterization and super-gendered insight. This production of Porter’s magnum opus applies mere Band-Aid to wound and, worse, obscures how the comedy itself comments critically on this volatile theme, exposes it in its violence, makes it unavoidable (if socially unacceptable) for an evening. The current producers to that extent are treating their Broadway audience like children in simplifying Shakespeare’s language and “softening” Kate’s action. I, for one, will never be a tamed female. But art is often made for examining such issues.
If you want to see how adult the performers in the original Broadway Kiss Me, Kate appeared, locate on-line the photographs that the young Stanley Kubrick took of the show’s final dress rehearsal for the old Look magazine. You see Alfred Drake and Patricia Morrison in the midst of “Wunderbar” and Harold Lang hovering in the air as Bill Calhoun. Just type “Kiss Me, Kate + Kubrick photographs” in Google and learn what time-travel and real ensemble look like. Hanya Holm was one versatile choreographer, and those dancers were grown-ups.
I have my work cut out for me. Pippa has to be grounded in the realities of show business. Master Raro has to recall American goals. Cheryl has to be coached in realpolitik. Her Sandy has to be reassured that he’ll have a job. Mr. Xu has to be seduced into capitalism’s rewards. And A&P must be controlled.
You are all at my hand to be taught.
L.E.
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