Kiss Me, Kate
| Kiss Me, Kate | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Music | Cole Porter |
| Lyrics | Cole Porter |
| Book | Samuel and Bella Spewack |
| Basis |
Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew |
| Productions | 1948 Broadway 1951 West End 1999 Broadway revival 2001 West End revival 2007 Italian Version 2012 Chichester / West End revival 2014 Pasadena 2015 Shakespeare Theatre Company, Washington D.C. |
| Awards |
Tony Award for Best Musical Tony Award for Composer and Lyricist Tony Award for Best Author Tony Award for Best Revival Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival Evening Standard for Best Musical Critics Circle for Best Musical |
Kiss Me, Kate is a musical written by Samuel and Bella Spewack with music and lyrics by Cole Porter.
The story involves the production of a musical version of William Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew and the conflict on and off-stage between Fred Graham, the show's director, producer, and star, and his leading lady, his ex-wife Lilli Vanessi. A secondary romance concerns Lois Lane, the actress playing Bianca, and her gambler boyfriend, Bill, who runs afoul of some gangsters. The original production starred Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Lisa Kirk and Harold Lang and won the Tony Award.
Kiss Me, Kate was Porter's response to Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! and other integrated musicals; it was the first show he wrote in which the music and lyrics were firmly connected to the script, and it proved to be his biggest hit and the only one of his shows to run for more than 1,000 performances on Broadway. In 1949, it won the first Tony Award presented for Best Musical.
On March 25, 2015, it was announced that the 1949 original cast recording will be inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry for the album's "cultural, artistic and/or historical significance to American society and the nation’s audio legacy".
The musical was inspired by the on-stage/off-stage battling of husband-and-wife actors Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne during their 1935 production of Shrew, witnessed by future Broadway producer Arnold Saint-Subber. In 1947 he asked the Spewacks (undergoing their own marital woes at the time) to write the script; Bella Spewack in turn enlisted Cole Porter to write the music and lyrics.
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