Creation overview
The success of "Kiss Me, Kate" is not due to accident, but through the artists' long-term artistic accumulation and a lot of hard work, it is the precipitation of history and the crystallization of art. Therefore, if someone carefully examines the creative techniques of the musical comedy "Kiss Me, Kate", it is not difficult to find that from the selection of the script to the staging of the play, from the creation of music to the performance of the actors, all reflect the wisdom of the artists.
Script source
The story of the play is derived from "The Taming of the Shrew", which is a typical comedy theme. But this alone is not enough to impress the audience, there is another emotional line in the play, brewing a true story, which is the inspiration of one of the show's producers, Saint Sabel, in a chance encounter.
When Sabel was just an extremely ordinary ordinary staff member in the Gayd Theater, he witnessed such a farce: there was a star couple in his troupe, and his husband Alfred Langte and his wife Fantine clashed their roles during the rehearsal, so that the drama "The Taming of the Shrew" staged on the stage was directly moved backstage.
This incident was kept in his mind as a joke, but he did not expect that a few years later it would trigger his creative inspiration.
Bella and Samuel Spewalker, the script adaptors of "Kiss Me, Kate", retain the basic structure of "The Taming of the Shrew" and present a musical rehearsal to tell the audience the love farce of a couple inside and outside the play.
Lily and Fred's marriage has ended, but the rehearsals for "The Taming of the Shrew" and the two meet again.
However, her husband and Louise, the actor of Bianca in the play, have a very ambiguous relationship, and during the rehearsal, the flirting behavior of the two deeply angered Lili, who still has deep feelings for her husband, and her husband is a self-serving producer and actor, so their conflict began to escalate from the rehearsal at 5:30 p.m.
Originally, this would not affect Lili's performance, but in the process of the performance, she discovered that the letterhead that she regarded as love did not belong to herself, but Louise, whom Fred gave her the most jealousy.
So during the performance, she brought her emotions to the stage, and used her special role to make a big girl's temper, which made the performance make a lot of jokes, and the whole performance was interpreted alive as a love farce between them, unexpectedly this was warmly welcomed by the audience.
Obviously, the blueprint comes from a theatrical work, and "Kiss Me, Kate" must have been modified a lot during the adaptation process, so there are many similarities between the two, but there are certainly also innovations. The following author makes a simple comparison between the two.
The first is in terms of theatrical stories: the theatrical text of "Kiss Me, Kate" is adapted from "The Taming of the Shrew", and a true story is added to the original theatrical story, and the two similar stories are displayed in front of the audience in and out of the play.
Therefore, the drama "Kiss Me, Kate" is basically the same as the drama story of "The Taming of the Shrew" on the whole, but with certain changes in structure.
Some of the more complex and cumbersome dramatic passages in "The Taming of the Shrew" were not moved to the stage of "Kiss Me, Kate", and only some important passages that illustrate the story of the drama remained.
And "Kiss Me, Kate", a musical in order to adapt more reasonably, added several important scenes of emotional entanglement between actors, which is where the difference between the two lies.
The second is the comparison of drama dialogue: the dramatic dialogue of "Kiss Me, Kate" basically retains a large number of Shakespeare's original sentences, and uses puns that are not well known at the time, but it has achieved good results, so it is not an exaggeration to say that "Kiss Me, Kate" has a strong Shakespeare flavor.
But as we know, "Kiss Me, Kate" borrows the creative thinking of the integration concept in its creation, so drama poetry also assumes an important dramatic function, which also means that many character dialogues in "Kiss Me, Kate" are presented in the form of drama poems, so it is necessary to complete this dramatic dialogue through singing.
So Cole Porter has made a lot of changes in the rhyme of these dialogues, and overall, the dramatic dialogue of "Kiss Me, Kate" is born out of "The Taming of the Shrew" but is more concise, catchy, and easier to circulate.
Finally, there is a comparison of the means of creating a comedy effect of the two dramas: in "The Taming of the Shrew", due to the limitations of the stage form, its funny means can only be character dialogue or character actions to achieve, but musicals are different, due to the diversified advantages of its own artistic elements, the musical comedy "Kiss Me, Kate" can not only create a funny atmosphere through character dialogue or character movements, but also through music, dance, etc. This is how "Kiss Me, Kate" is more diverse than "Taming the Shrew".
The dramatic source of the musical comedy "Kiss Me, Kate" is "Taming the Shrew", but it has greater artistic charm than "The Taming of the Shrew", which is thanks to the creative team of "Kiss Me, Kate", whose continuous persistence and innovation have led to the success of "Kiss Me, Kate".
However, when it comes to "Kiss Me, Kate," it's hard not to think about his songwriter Cole Porter. It is precisely because of his creation that irreplaceable blood has been injected into the play, and his creation is the most important factor in the success of this play.
It is his music and drama poetry that make the play the biggest difference from previous musical comedies - drama.
The creative process
The 40s of the 20th century can be said to be the glory of Rogers and Hammerstein II, and the musical theater artists of the same period used them as a bellwether on the one hand, and on the other hand, they were stressed because of their talents, and Cole Porter was one of them. Porter in this period was no longer the famous artist of the year, and his tragic life process even made many people think that he was already a declining "antique" figure, and no one would have thought that he would usher in the peak of his career.
Cole Porter was born on June 9, 1891 in Peru, Indiana, USA. At the age of 6, he studied music under the auspices of his mother.
Completing his debut novel "Song of the Birds" at the age of 10, Porter showed extraordinary musical talent as a teenager and published a lot of musical works.
However, his Broadway musical, SeeAmerica First (1916), was thwarted by a 15-game fiasco, and he turned to France, where he met and married his beloved, Linda Lee Thomas, in Paris, and in the sweet life, Cole Potter devoted himself to creation, finally completing his first masterpiece, Let's DoIt, Let's sFallinLove), has since become well-known in the composer world.
Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929), The New Yorkers (1930) and Anything Goes (1934) largely established his position on Broadway.
However, fate tricked him, just when Cole Potter's career was in full swing, he experienced the most painful blow in his body: in a riding accident in 1937, Cole suffered a serious leg injury, even after countless surgeries could not heal him, he had to endure the great pain caused by amputation, and his only spiritual support came from the unwavering protection of his wife Linda.
Lying in his hospital bed, Porter continued to write, completing "YouNeverKnow", writing a series of songs such as "AtLong LastLove", and over the next seven years wrote 6 popular works, 5 of which had more than 400 performances.
But since this injury, the former energetic and even a little proud Cole Porter has disappeared from everyone's eyes, and his career has continued to decline with this accident.
Perhaps because of the tenacity brought about by the previous difficulties, or because of Cole Porter's own words, "my work saved me because it paralyzed my physical pain", finally after enduring almost 10 years of pain, he once again reached the pinnacle of Broadway musicals with "Kiss Me, Kate".
Audiences find that this musical is no longer like his previous works, just pouring his talents into a few best-selling songs.
In "Kiss Me, Kate", all the music is considered countless times, and the music is almost calculated to the second, and she fully demonstrates the deep sincerity that Cole Porter presents to the audience after he has faded his pride.
The musical comedy "Kiss Me, Kate" premiered at the Broadway Century Theatre on December 30, 1948, and was performed for 1,070 performances, and the performance was a great success, not only topping the number of performances in the 40s, but also winning the Tony Award for Best Musical and Best Costume Design for the first time established by the Tony Awards in 1949.
The play not only performed well on stage, but was also filmed as a film by Hollywood in 1953. Nearly 50 years after its premiere, in November 1999, Michael Blakemore's new version of "Kiss Me, Kate" (1999-stillrunning) underwent its first rehearsal since its release, winning not only great comments from critics, but also a sizable box office, becoming the biggest winner of the 2000 Tony Awards and the biggest award-winning professional on Broadway.
With a total of 5 awards, including Best Rehearsal Musical, Best Arrangement, Best Costume Design, Best Musical Director, and Best Actor, Michael Blakemore is the only one to date to win both a Tony Award for Musical Theatre Director and Theatre Director in the same year.
The play has also won 4 Critics' Circle Awards, 5 Drama Desk Awards and 4 nominations, as well as 1 Drama Alliance Award nomination and 3 Astair Award nominations.