A Kissable ‘Kate’ at UCI

Legend has it that Cole Porter really didn’t want to write the music and lyrics for “Kiss Me, Kate” ? he had to be coerced into the project by playwright Bella Spewack, who created the 1948 musical with the nominal help of her estranged husband, Sam.

With apologies to “Anything Goes,” however, it’s “Kiss Me, Kate” for which most will remember Porter, and rightly so. Nearly six decades later, it’s still a tuneful, snappy and comical show.

Just check into UC Irvine’s Claire Trevor Theater this weekend and see for yourself.

Everything about the UCI production, gleefully directed by Robert Cohen, shimmers with the ersatz veneer of the stage itself ? including Douglas-Scott Goheen’s settings, Kristine N. Haag’s period costumes and Preston J. Horman’s lighting effects. The full-bodied university orchestra, under the baton of Daniel Gary Busby, is a particularly potent force in bringing this vintage musical comedy back to glorious life.

The plot of “Kiss Me, Kate” goes back, of course, to Shakespeare. A financially strapped director lures a celebrated Hollywood actress ? who hasn’t had a hit movie lately ? to Baltimore to co-star in his musical adaptation of “The Taming of the Shrew.”

The actress also is the director’s ex-wife, and the flames are not completely extinguished ? which is why, when a bouquet of flowers with a tender note mistakenly arrives in her dressing room instead of that of the intended recipient, the show’s ingenue, the shrew really gets shrewish, on and off the stage, and the fun begins in earnest.

Jason Vande Brake and Caitlin McGinty may well have been born to play these principal characters, so splendidly do they interact in the roles. Vande Brake, a towering actor with a deep, robust voice, properly commands the stage with a leonine roar, while McGinty gives as good as she gets with a furious interpretation and a gorgeous soprano voice.

Nevertheless, audiences still may leave the performance chatting about the leggy ingenue dancer (Lauren Gira), the MacArthur-esque general (Evans Jarnefeldt), the dice-rolling hoofer (Mark Bedard) or ? especially ? the semi-sophisticated gangsters (Omar Ricks and Adrian Alita) who stop the show with three choruses of “Brush Up Your Shakespeare.”

Depth of talent is a major factor in this show. Scott Reardon is a good deal more than the star’s valet, as he proves by igniting the second act with Porter’s “Too Darn Hot” number, choreographed by Donald McKayle in a style recalling the late Bob Fosse (a featured dancer in the movie version). Likewise, Angel Moore attends to the female diva’s needs but also gets the production rolling with “Another Op’nin’, Another Show.”

Both Vande Brake and McGinty take a tuneful turn at “So in Love,” and the pair team beautifully in “Wunderbar.” But the real frosting on this lustrous cake comes with McGinty’s raging “I Hate Men” solo and, later, when Vande Brake wonders “Where is the Life That Late I Led?”

Gira makes the most of her moment in the spotlight as she torments Bedard in the “Always True to You in My Fashion” number, which he counters with the clever “Bianca” solo. Both shine in the bouncy “Tom, Dick or Harry” segment with Luis Carazo and QuinnVan Antwerp filling in as Gira’s other suitors.

“Kiss Me, Kate” may be something of a show business antique, but few musical comedies being turned out today can match the Spewack-Porter style, which placed the emphasis on both “musical” and “comedy.” UCI raises the bar on both counts.