Kiss Me, Kate

I was in attendance on October 22, 2015 for opening night of the Kiss Me, Kate play in Lyell B. Clay, which is located on the first floor of the Creative Arts Center.

The purpose of this play was to show demonstrate love prevailing. I believe that they are also trying to show that you never really know what you have until its gone. At the beginning of the play, Fred Graham and Lillie Vanessi were divorced but share a kiss in the dressing room, which leaves a thought in the audiences’ head that they are still in love. However, things go south when flowers from Graham are mistakenly delivered to Vanessi rather that to Lois Lane. Vanessi gets excited and Graham doesn’t know what to do so he goes along with it. Soon after, Lillie Vanessi figures out that the flowers were not hers and causes havoc for the play The Taming of the Shrew that Graham, Vanessi, and others were taking part in. The student actors did a magnificent job and really took their talents to a level I’ve never seen before in a live production. I thought the play was a bit confusing at first because of the play being inside of another play, but once that was made clear, it was pretty straightforward. The design was very clever, and I thought the costumes were very unique.

The attempt of the play to show how their love prevailed through all the action was very successful. There was this feeling that they should be together throughout. The musical sections sounded exquisite and that is a hats off to the actors and the sound designer. That connected the plays beginning, middle, and end very well. Along with being entertaining, I have never seen a live musical before. I learned how different a musical is compared to a non-musical play such as The Clean House.

I think this play was very well thought out. The way that the actors were able to show such emotion in pretty much two plays was extraordinary! The flow was great; I never saw the play as choppy, which can happen in a play with an abundance of actor such as this one. The attempt was successful because when they kissed in the last scene, there was a lot of emotion that was brought out that had been held in by the audience throughout the play. The actors talents were put to great use because they were able to affect the audience as a whole in the end.