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Kiss Me Kate
London Coliseum
BASED on Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew, itself a play within a play, Jo Davies's Kiss Me Kate is a musical within a musical and this Opera North revival, getting its first West End outing after touring in 2015, is a production with some pizazz.
Cole Porter wrote a pitch-perfect score for what's largely considered his greatest musical and onstage it proves as timeless as the classic 1953 film adaptation. There's opera, dance and even some tap-dancing thrown in to a well-plotted mix in which the egotistical Fred Graham (Quirijn de Lang), directing Shakespeare's play, has also cast himself in the lead role Petruchio with his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi (Stephanie Corley) as leading lady Kate.
Not without a well-served dollop of irony, their relationship offstage is as prickly as on it and they don't always need to draw on their technical prowess as performers to make the sparks fly.
The sub-plot between Broadway broad Lois Lane (Zoe Rainey), who plays Kate's younger sister Bianca and her gambler boyfriend Bill Calhoun (Alan Burkitt) as Lucentio, mirrors that between Graham and Lane — their characters offstage are so akin to their roles that they require little acting on their part.
In contrast to Kate's shrewish I Hate Men number, Bianca sings that she'll marry any Tom, Dick or Harry in one of the comic highlights of the musical. And when an outraged Bill discovers that Lois once had a fling with Harrison Howell (Malcolm Ridley), an older man and Lilli's new flame, she reassures him with a show-stopping performance of Always True to You in My Fashion.
Special praise goes to Joseph Shovelton and John Savournin as the comic-duo mobsters who for once are actually funny as they chase the $10,000 IOU racked up by Calhoun's gambling habits but fraudulently signed for under Graham's name.
Panto-like, the pair deliver one of the show's most memorable numbers, Brush Up Your Shakespeare, as if to remind the audience of the musical's source material.
Boasting a smorgasbord of styles and influences, alongside vibrant choreography embellished with Colin Richmond's Renaissance set design, Kiss Me Kate eventually proves that all's well that ends well.
Runs until June 30, box office: londoncoliseum.org
