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Kiss Me Kate

Kiss Me, Kate is a musical based on the play The Taming of the Shrew by William Shakespeare. The musical has music and lyrics by Cole Porter and a book by Bella and Samuel Spewack.

It premiered on Broadway in 1948 and ran for more than 1000 performances. The musical opened at the West End in 1951. It won three categories at the Tony Awards in 1949 and for Best Revival in 1999.

The musical was also based on the on-stage, and off-stage conflict between Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne (the husband-wife actor duo) during the production of the same Shakespeare play in 1935. Arnold Saint-Subber witnessed the conflict and approached Spewacks in 1947 to write a script for the show. Bella Spewack contacted Cole Porter to compose music and write the lyrics. Porter took this as an opportunity to create his first integrated musical on the lines of Oklahoma!

Background History and Other Information

John C. Wilson directed the original Broadway version. It had Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison, Harold Lang, Lisa Kirk, Harry Clark, and Charles Wood in the main roles. Hanya Holm, who is one of the Big Four of American modern dance, choreographed the musical. Kiss Me, Kate had a pre-Broadway tryout for three and a half weeks in Philadelphia in the first week of December 1948. It officially premiered at the New Century Theater on 30th December of the same year. After running for nineteen months, the musical was moved to The Shubert Theater.

The West End version was directed by Sam Spewack himself. However, it had Patricia Morison, Adelaide Hall, Bill Johnson, and Julie Wilson in the lead roles. The musical was performed in Australia in 1952 at the His Majesty's Theatre in Melbourne. It had many seasons until 1954 and was produced in Sydney, Perth, Brisbane, and Adelaide.

Kiss Me, Kate was revived multiple times in 1970, 1987, 1999, 2001, 2012, 2015, and 2019. The latest 2019 Broadway revival had minor feminist edits to make it more relatable to the current audiences. It won the Drama Desk Award and Outer Critics Circle Awards for outstanding choreography and an outstanding revival at the Drama League Awards in 2019.

The musical is divided into two acts, with eleven songs in act one and nine in act two. A few musical numbers were replaced, added, and removed in different versions.