Blog: Insufficient Tap Dancing

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A week and a bit ago, back in the days when The Tories ran the country (remember them?) myself and The Seat Number On My Ticket went to the THEATRE!

We went to The Barbican to see Kiss Me Kate and it was JOLLY GOOD. I am a BIG FAN of the original movie version, having watched it about 17,000 times on BBC2 during school holidays and then many more since, so was EXCITED to hear the songs live but also mildly cautious because I knew it would not be exactly the same. This was WISE because it was NOT the same, although I must admit I did continue to struggle with this throughout.

Part of this was due to a complete lack of HOWARD KEEL who is UTTERLY GRATE in the original, but I eventually managed to get past this. As many will know I have TROD THE BOARDS myself on various occasions in the past and know full well that a different actor will bring a different INTERPRETATION to a piece darling, and Adrian Dunbar very much did that. NOBODY could do a Howard Keel (apart from Actual Howard Keel obvs) and he went nowhere near it, so all was well.

The problem, however, was one that is common to many aspects of life, both cultural and otherwise, and that was a lack of TAP DANCING. There are huge great LUMPS of "Kiss Me Kate" that call for tap dancing and weirdly that hardly happened. I could have BORNE this manfully if the production had not kept VEERING towards tap dancing and then giving up at the last moment. For instance, there were multiple occasions where SOME people started doing a bit of tap dancing but then the main characters DID NOT, instead just jiggling about a bit. The weirdest version of this was during "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" when the gangsters (who were BRILLIANT) gradually got more and more into doing a proper routine, with hats and canes and everything, building up and up to what was clearly going to be a big tap dance routine... and then didn't do it. It was WEIRD!

Lots of the rest was dead good though, and we had a LOVELY time. This was helped by the theatre itself, which had big comfy seats with plenty of legroom and a wide selection of bars. It DID have a ludicrously long walk to the TOILETS because a) there was some refurbs going on and b) someone had booked a private party in the middle of the building so you had to GO OUTSIDE to walk round it to get to the toilets, but in a funny way this gave everyone in the audience something in common to grumble mildly about. Also, we saw someone who LOOKED and DRESSED exactly like Larry David, which was a constant source of JOY!

It was, in summary, DEAD GOOD, although clearly I need to do some more work on Not Expecting Howard Keel if I ever go and see CALAMITY JANE!

posted 11/7/2024 by MJ Hibbett

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