Kiss Me Kate.indd - Stratford Festival

this was Porter’s. Writing for specific charactersin a developing story led him to his finest score,one as chockablock with standards as Berlin’sfor Annie Get Your Gun. It landed him on thecover of Time magazine in January of 1949, andalthough his final trio of musical comedies (Outof This World, Can-Can and Silk Stockings) didn’tmatch his undisputed masterpiece, Porter, whosesongs had first graced a Broadway stage in 1916,was given a fresh start in the New Art Form.And yet . . . what about First Man and SecondMan, those gangsters shoehorned into theplot as if it were still 1923 and Oklahoma! hadnever happened? The Spewacks had initiallypromised Porter that this pair of vaudevilleclowns weren’t going to sing – but then therules of showbiz intervened: how about acomedy number playing on the Bard’s titles?Let it be said, in conclusion, that Rodgers andHammerstein didn’t eschew entertainment for itsown sake. While their talents certainly elevatedand extended the dramatic range of a popularform and set benchmarks for posterity, many,many strains of musical theatre co-exist everyseason on Broadway (even in 2010, when for everyNext to Normal there are two Rock of Ages). Themusical comedy has traditionally been a moreelastic beast, so if your evening’s entertainmenthas already included “Wunderbar,” “So In Love,”“Why Can’t You Behave?,” “Were Thine ThatSpecial Face?,” “Tom, Dick or Harry,” “Too DarnHot” and “Always True to You in My Fashion,” thenthere is no reason in the world why First Man andSecond Man can’t come down to the footlightsjust before the finale and kill the audience with“Brush Up Your Shakespeare.” Because if theirlaughs have been raining down all night, and theireleven o’clock number has lyrics on the order ofJust recite an occasional SonnetAnd your lap will have “Honey” upon it,When your baby is pleading for pleasureLet her sample your “Measure for Measure”then this pair of deliriously unintegrated, all-licens’dfools can misbehave to their heart’s content –and ours.James Magruder, dramaturge for A FunnyThing Happened on the Way to the Forumlast season, teaches at SwarthmoreCollege and the Yale School of Drama.4