Cole Porter's 1948 musical "Kiss Me, Kate" is a giddy love letter to the theatre, said David Jays in The Guardian. Filled with "falderol frivolity" and glorious songs – "Too Darn Hot", "So in Love" and more – the show is a Broadway classic, and Bartlett Sher's "exhilarating" and luxurious revival should prove a big summer hit for the Barbican.
A witty spin on "The Taming of the Shrew", the set-up is that a divorced couple – producer/director/actor Fred and his movie star ex-wife Lilli – are opening in a musical version of the Shakespeare play. As their tempestuous offstage and onstage relationships intertwine, the "characters bicker in dialogue but unpack their hearts in song".
Now best known for his role in TV's "Line of Duty", Adrian Dunbar is "unorthodox casting" as the monstrously egotistical Fred, said Clive Davis in The Times. He's not the "most potent of singers" or athletic of dancers, but his "light comic touch" serves him well.
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Meanwhile, the part of Lilli is taken by the Broadway star Stephanie J. Block – and she delivers a "knockout turn", said Marianka Swain in The Telegraph. Her acting is brilliantly nuanced, and her singing "simply divine". Elsewhere, Peter Davison is a "hoot as the general with a roving eye", Charlie Stemp supplies "sensational tap dancing and cheeky charisma", and Georgina Onuorah, as the ingénue Lois, is magnificent and "very much in charge", making "Always True to You in My Fashion" a "girl-power triumph".
For me, the evening lacked "pizzazz", said Nick Curtis in the Evening Standard. Where it should have been "fizzy and light", it felt "solid and serviceable", and there was precious little chemistry between Block and Dunbar, the latter seeming "uncomfortable and off the pace throughout".
Block is sensational, said David Benedict in The Stage. And Nigel Lindsay and Hammed Animashaun as the stagestruck gangsters bring the house down with their "Brush Up Your Shakespeare". But when it is the gangster subplot and the "glorious costumes" that steal the show, you know that something has gone awry.
