Nick's Place

Nicholas Barnard Kiss Me Kate Review 5/14/2001

One thing that theatrical technicians bemoan, is that their efforts usually go largely unnoticed by the general public unless they make noticeable mistakes. I will address the technical mistakes I noticed first, as to separate them from the other departments. Most distracting was the sound reinforcement for the actors singing would drop out at many points, and at many other points would be woefully inadequate, although I was sitting in the second row and was reasonably close to a speaker. I would have to say that this distracted from my overall enjoyment of the musical.

The lighting was overall well done; there were a few very distracting cues that moved my eye around without any reason in the action of the play. Overall the lighting was very well done and properly portrayed the mood, especially in the “Too Darn Hot” number.

The scariest technical mistake was the mistiming of flying in a false proscenium and gripping out a wagon. The fly struck the wagon, and was ripped. The stage manager probably properly held the scene of a moment and then restarted the action. The false proscenium continued to sway from stage right to stage left for almost the whole scene, a distracting sight.

I surmise that opening night, or perhaps the Saturday performance at the latest resolved most of these technical problems. On the other hand every other aspect of the performance was wonderfully balanced.

Most brilliantly overbearingly (and rightfully so) was Ryan Cutlip's performance. He exposed his character's eccentricities in a brilliantly comic format. While every actor on stage played very well to the comic ideal expoused by the director, Mr. Cutlip, stole the show.

The set, designed by Pam Knauert, was wonderfully expressive of Director Joe Deer's comic direction. Without the actors these sets look like brilliant comic designs that belong in cartoon, with the actors they draw the comedic ideals to the maximum, only hampered because actors don't have irregular lined shaped heads.

Overall Kiss Me Kate was a wonderful production the would have been more successful without all of the technical snafus. I plan to see it again, and hope that the tech items have been cleaned up for my enjoyment.