Kiss Me Kate At St. Jacobs Country Playhouse
I grabbed a ticket for Kiss Me Kate at Drayton Entertainment’s St. Jacobs Country Playhouse when I saw that the cast included that fabulous farceur Eddie Glen and that immense talent Neil Barclay as the gangsters.
And indeed their rendition of “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” was was worth the trip from Stratford. What I hadn’t anticipated was how much I would enjoy the rest of the show.
The direction and choreography of Michael Lichtefeld, the good performances in the most important roles, the attractive ensemble, the colorful costumes of Rachel Berchtold, and the ever-changing sets of Douglas Paraschuk combined to make Kiss Me Kate the best musical I’ve seen at Drayton in a while.
I will dispense with a Kiss Me Kate plot summary on the assumption that if you are reading this you already know it, along with great songs like “Too Darn Hot” and “Always True To You In My Fashion,” and if not, shame on you! Brush up your Cole Porter (music and lyrics) and your Sam and Bella Spewack (book).
Kaylee Harwood and Eric Craig do very well with the leading roles of Kate and Petruchio as they battle both on and offstage. But I was perhaps even more taken with Rachel Fairbanks and Cory Linger. Fairbanks scores as the blonde bombshell who plays Bianca and Linger as her sometime boyfriend who plays Lucentio. Linger turns in a most impressive tap number in the second act, while Fairbanks reveals she’s a more than competent singer/dancer.
As director, Lichtefeld has done some judicious cutting to fit his 20-member cast and as choreographer he has made the most of the talents of his principal male dancers and the ensemble. I was unfamiliar with his earlier work at Drayton but I’ll be on the lookout for his name when future productions are announced. Could he be Drayton’s answer to Stratford’s Donna Feore?
There have been, no doubt, more spectacular and better sung renditions of Kiss Me Kate, but in the comfortable and rather intimate confines of the St. Jacobs Country Playhouse this production seems just right. I’m finding that the compact balcony sections make for an almost ideal vantage point to take in a Drayton musical.
Kiss Me Kate continues at the St. Jacobs Country Playhouse through September 1, 2024. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the Drayton Entertainment website.
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