Scripts in hand, cast and crew “Kiss Me, Kate” started exercising Quintessence Theater Ensemble last offer on the morning of election day.
This turned out to be more crucial than anyone expected.
Performance – A The Cole Porter Musical riff on “The Taming of the Shrew” by William Shakespeare – is a behind-the-scenes comedy about a powerful woman who refuses to be tamed and makes her own choices.
Although Quintessence chose this play long before the election and even long before Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, the connection between the day’s events and the message of “Kiss Me, Kate” was not lost on the cast and crew.
The show “says that there is a place for powerful women to be themselves, to speak for themselves and to be equal partners with each other,” she said. Todd Underwood, who came from New York to choreograph and direct the production of Quintessence, which runs from November 27 to January 5 at Sedgwick Theatre in the district of Mt. Airy in Philadelphia.
“Together, without ego and without gimmicks, we show how two people, a group of people, a nation, a world, how we should all be equal and we should all have a say,” Underwood said.
“Colorful, powerful, powerful, stubborn – when [these words] they are attached to women, it’s something negative,” he said. “This play says, ‘No, these are positives.’ “
Shakespeare’s play, written around 1590, focuses on the character of Catherine, the titular shrew, known for her stubbornness and honesty. Many suitors try to marry Bianca, her pretty younger sister, who is considered the perfect woman. But her father, a wealthy nobleman, will not agree to any marriage until Catherine is married.
Knowing his father’s wealth, Petruchio sees an opportunity and marries Catherine, “taming” her mentally.
The extent to which the bard’s work is misogynistic has been the subject of numerous scholarly articles and is part of a energetic that exists today and that existed in 1948 when Cole Porter’s Broadway hit had its pre-Broadway rehearsals at the Shubert Theater in Philadelphia (now Miller Theatre).
Art within art within art
In Porter’s re-staging, the main characters, Lilli Vanessa/Katharine and Fred Graham/Petruchio, are actors in a revival of Shakespeare’s play. After the divorce, they both love and hate each other. There’s a lot of behind-the-scenes storylines and a lot of great songs, including the gangster-singing classic “Brush Up On Your Shakespeare.”
Underwood says the behind-the-scenes performances are part of the enduring charm of “Kiss Me, Kate.”
“It’s kind of like voyeurism, getting information from the inside,” Underwood said.
“This group of 12 people tell a story within a story, within a story, within a story,” said Underwood, who also choreographed the double-cast Broadway production of “Kiss Me, Kate.”
The characters, he said, “are very individual at first. They play the show’s crew. Then they leave the stage and become actors in the show. And then some of our actors come off stage and become other characters in the show.”
Playing the lead role is a local favorite Jenny Eisenhower, Paoli, who has a long history with “Kiss Me, Kate.” As a teenager, she directed it for a school play at ul Conestoga High School on the Main Line. While in college, she performed in a play. And in 2016, the same year that Hillary Clinton ran for president and lost, director Peter Reynolds cast Eisenhower in the lead role in a play at Ambler’s Act II Theater.
“The roles are incredibly juicy and complex,” she said. “I understand that there is an inherent Shakespearean misogyny in it, but it is worth looking at how Porter adapts it to the needs of a newfangled audience.
“He actually makes a feminist choice at the end of the piece,” Eisenhower said. “It looks like she agrees with this powerful man, but underneath there is a wink and a nod to the idea that she must bow to her husband.”
Presidential prerogative
Eisenhower, who has performed on most stages in the region, got her start as a teenager, performing “How Much Is That Doggy In The Window” for her grandfather, former President Richard Nixon, then living in Saddle River, New Jersey. grandparents are former president Dwight Eisenhower and his wife Mamie Eisenhower.
In the Nixon home, where little Jennie Eisenhower watched Shirley Temple movies with her grandmother, Thelma Catherine “Pat” Nixon, there was a pocket door in the dining room that opened into the hallway, serving as a stage and curtains.
Eisenhower recruited her younger sister to play the window dog, and she ended up stealing the show. “They say, ‘Never go on stage with dogs and children. They are the ones who get all the attention. I was doomed to failure,” she laughed.
Years later, her grandfather came to see Eisenhower perform at Conestoga High in the lead role of Little Red Riding Hood in Stephen Sondheim’s “Into The Woods.”
“He came, saw me and stayed” signing autographs, he recalls. “He was there for many hours and two weeks later he died.”
Just so you know
“Kiss Me, Kate,” November 27-January. 5, Quintessence Theater Group, Sedgwick Theatre, 7137 Germantown Ave., Philadelphia, 215-987-4450.
