A sweet Kiss

Colonial's delightful Kate

by Bill Rodriguez

KISS ME KATE. Music and lyrics by Cole Porter, book by Bella & Samuel Spewack. Directed by Harland Meltzer. With Dan Healy, Patricia Leines, Jennifer R. Miller. At Colonial Theatre through September 5.

As if things aren't dramatic enough in the theater, opening night for the Cole Porter musical Kiss Me Kate at Colonial Theatre had quite the extra dimension. Imagine a performance starting out with a drum roll, and you don't know whether it's building up to a flourish of trumpets -- ta-dah . . . or a firing squad fusillade. Artistic director Harland Meltzer walked onto the stage and announced that his lead actor, Richard Lear, was knocked out of commission by a throat infection the day before, and there was no stand-in waiting in the wings.

So, stepping into the role only the evening before came Dan Healy, who had played the part in an amateur production in Connecticut two months before. He had to re-memorize his lines, learn new blocking, smooth out the rough edges of the previous production, gain the confidence of a mainly Actors' Equity cast, and he had to pray.

Ta-dah! Colonial's Kiss Me Kate is a delight. Healy didn't miss a beat.

He plays Fred Graham, an actor and impresario leading a troupe of performers in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew in pre-Broadway try-outs. As befits the take-charge role, Healy marches forth with confidence and charm, giving us a thoroughly convincing and entertaining performance.

Graham is playing Petruchio, the tamer of Kate (Patricia Leines), who is also Lilli Vanessi, his wife until their divorce exactly one year earlier. In the True Love tradition, they each still carry a spark for each other, which is ready to be fanned into a torch by final curtain. But instead of displaying burning ardor, Lilli is soon darting fiery glances at her ex. She mistakenly receives flowers he had sent to someone else, and she thinks they are a romantic reconciliation offering. When she finds out otherwise, Lilli is every bit as furious at Fred as Kate is onstage toward Petruchio.

We get plenty of Shakespeare's play, although it's largely condensed and filled out with more playfulness. (Petruchio, after making the dowry arrangement with her father: "Get thee to a notary.") Oddly, some of the Bard's bawdy exchanges are made less lewd -- even though it is such a sexually aware musical , with the half-dozen-plus refrains of "Too Darn Hot" all saying the same thing: it's too hot to have sex. Most of the fun involves the on/off-stage banter of the battling romantics. Leines is funny in furious mode on both sides of the curtain, but she can also wax lyrical in "So in Love Am I."

The rest of the ensemble gives plenty of solid support. Playing ingénue Lois Lane, who is Intimidated by all of Bianca's thees and thous, Jennifer R. Miller celebrates wide eyes and bad acting. Her "Always True to You (In My Fashion)" is whimsical, adorable. Also appealing in their every scene are a pair of polite gangsters (Richard Herron and Roman Alexander), sent to collect from Healy on a gambling IOU. We eventually learn that they spent eight years in a penitentiary together, and most of that time in the prison library, learning words they mispronounce.

Cole Porter was at the prime of his cleverness, writing the songs here. The variety is wide-ranging, from Viennese operettas made fun of in "Wunderbar," to the mocking, scathing "I Hate Men." Times being what they were in 1948, too many lines can make us shudder ("Won't you turn a new leaf over/ so your baby can be your slave?") or wince ("Taunt me and hurt me/Deceive me, desert me"). It helps, though, that the last example is also repeated by Graham in a weak moment.

Costume design by Danielle Castronovo is opulent, as you'd expect at a theater that offers an annual Shakespeare In the Park series -- this year The Taming of the Shrew overlaps with this take-off on it. A special treat is the choreography by Greg Templeton, especially an early tap number and the elaborate accompaniment to "Too Darn Hot."

On opening night, after the company grinned and bowed at their standing ovation, and after director Meltzer accepted handshakes and huzzahs at the door, he remarked: "Yesterday at one o'clock, being alive now was beyond my event horizon."

Ah, the magic and many wonders of live theater!