Enchanted Evenings:The Broadway Musical from 'Show Boat' to Sondheim and Lloyd Webber Block, Geoffrey (large ebook reader .txt) 📖

battle between Kate/Lilli and Petruchio/ Fred that ensues is supported appropriately enough by a military march with dotted rhythms of a martial nature (Example 10.5a) before Kate sings a “quasi cadenza angrily” and the chorus concludes the act with a syncopated variant of “Another Op’nin.’”

Example 10.5. Transformation of act I finale into act II finale

(a) March

(b) Waltz

Porter signifies his intent to parallel this ending when, at the outset of the second-act finale, he offers an unmistakable melodic transformation in triple meter of Petruchio’s act I duple-metered serenade. Instead of insults, Kate/Lilli now interjects various terms of endearment in Italian. Petruchio’s words, like Petruchio himself, remain unchanged from one act finale to the other, while Kate’s dramatically contrasting response reinforces the significant change she had revealed moments before in her final song, “I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple.”16 Finally, the second melody of the act I finale (the march, Example 10.5a) returns transformed into a waltz, the dance of love (Example 10.5b). The transformation from a militaristic march to a romantic waltz succeeds simply but effectively in establishing musical equivalences for the dramatic changes that have taken place in the dynamics between Kate/Petruchio and Lilli/Fred.17

Act II: Shakespeare

After Rodgers and Hammerstein, the second tough act for Porter and his collaborators Bella and Sam Spewack to follow was “the bard of Stratford-on-Avon” himself, Shakespeare. As Bella Spewack writes in the introduction to the published libretto, “We hated to cut Shakespeare.”18 But when she received an unexpected and unwelcome new song from Porter, “Brush Up Your Shakespeare,” both Spewacks acknowledged that they would have to adjust to the unpleasant idea that Shakespeare would be playing second fiddle to the demands of Broadway. Bella tells it this way in her introduction to the published libretto:

We realized that according to the classic standards of Broadway it [“Brush Up”] was a “boff” number—a show-stopper, if you please. Perhaps not a New Art Form, but definitely a must for the male patron. So instead of any throat-cutting [Porter had written that “Belle will probably cut her throat when she gets this”], we dropped the final scene (all Shakespeare) and a beautiful dance for which the stairs had been built. We had exactly three minutes left in which to finish our show.19

According to Porter biographer George Eells, Porter’s decision to add another song, “Bianca,” for Harold Lang (Lucentio/Bill Calhoun) precipitated a strained correspondence between the Spewacks and the composer-lyricist.20 Since Lang, then known primarily as a dancer, was not yet the star he would become four years later as the lead in Rodgers and Hart’s Pal Joey revival, he was not given a solo when Porter and the Spewacks were planning their scenario. Patricia Morison, the original Kate/Lilli, recalls, however, that Lang “had it in his contract that he had to have a song in the second act” and “pulled a snit” until Porter decided “to write something that’s going to be so bad they won’t keep it in.”21 Silly and parodistic of the old Gillette razor jingle (“Look Sharp”) as it is, “Bianca” added a great song and dance number for Lang and the show. Without “Bianca,” Bill Calhoun would only sing “Gee, I need you kid” near the end of “Why Can’t You Behave?” and a verse of “Tom, Dick or Harry,” and would remain virtually indistinguishable in musical importance from Bianca’s other suitors.22

Bella Spewack fought and won a battle with the producers to retain “Were Thine That Special Face” and persuaded Porter himself to leave “Tom, Dick or Harry” in the show. Nevertheless, the libretto that the Spewacks originally sent to Porter contained far more of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew than audiences would eventually see in Kiss Me, Kate. Most notably, the May libretto included Shakespeare’s lines in act IV, scene 5, when Kate capitulates to Petruchio and agrees that the sun is the moon or vice versa according to his whim, and Kate’s complete final speech in act V, scene 2.23 Porter would collaborate with the bard on an abbreviated version of this latter speech to produce “I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple.” Gone entirely from the May libretto is the Induction (often cut from Shakespeare productions as well). Also removed from Shakespeare is the character of the Widow, the woman who eventually marries Bianca’s suitor, Hortensio. The Widow’s departure led to the demise of her counterpart in the Baltimore company as well, Angela Temple.24

The major dramatic departure from Shakespeare’s play, however, occurred after the May libretto draft. In May, when Lilli learns from Fred that she is no longer under the custody of the two gunmen and therefore free to abandon the Shrew play, she informs her ex-husband (Fred), without hesitation, that she will not desert:

FRED: Well, Miss Vanessi, you may leave now.

LILLI: I am not leaving!

FRED: Sleeping Beauty [Harrison] waits in your dressing room.

LILLI: Let him NAP!

FRED: Don’t tell me the bloom is off (HEsneezes)—the rose?25

A few lines later Fred and Lilli reprise “We Shall Never Be Younger,” a song that would soon be discarded. The two had sung a portion of this song together to conclude their duet in act I, scene 1, “It Was Great Fun the First Time,” and Lilli sang the whole song alone in her dressing room two scenes later. Although the two stormy actors are not yet fully reconciled, an audience could reasonably infer from the reprise of their shared song that Fred and Lilli are on the verge of starting a happier third act together.

By December the Spewacks made a significant alteration in the dialogue to set up Fred’s reprise of the newly added “So in Love” to replace “We Shall Never Be Younger” in act I:

FRED: You’re free to go. You don’t have to finish the show…. Aren’t you taking Sleeping Beauty with you?

LILLI: Let him sleep.

FRED: Don’t tell me the bloom is off—the rose? … Lilli, you can’t walk out on me now.

LILLI: You walked out on me once.

FRED: But I came back.

(LILLIhesitates)

DOORMAN: (From