Brushing Up Shakespeare

AT HIS BEST, Cole Porter wrote songs which seemed so effortlessly graceful they transcended the conventions of Broadway. Porter perfected what was most ridiculous about the conventions, their inexorable chord progressions and rhymes, and his best songs came out sounding ridiculously perfect, luminous in their wit and dazzling in their style. To come across right, they have to be done almost perfectly, too: unstylish style just comes out sounding like sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh--a bit like Paul Schommer's orchestra through much of the Loeb's Kiss Me Kate.

Since a lot of the non-musical, non-Shakespearian parts of the show have mediocrity built into them, even intermittent lapses into flat blues notes or beats that don't flow or dances that don't seem to matter threaten to do serious damage to the show. But it's a good enough show so its faults aren't disastrous. In fact, by the time everything comes together, somewhere around "Brush Up Your Shakespeare," the show is bordering on high comedy. And I guess maybe a case could be made for occasional tediousness as authenticity: "a very excellent piece of work," the lone spectator in the original Taming of the Shrew remarks halfway through, "would 'twere over."

All the parts in the Loeb's production are competently filled, the scenes from The Taming of the Shrew which the show's company is readying for New York, faring better, on the whole, than the ones from whenever the show took place before director Josh Rubins updated its topical references. Paul Seltzer and Andy Cadiff do well by the Shakespeare-quoting thugs who keep Deanne McKinstry from walking out of the show, and Carol Dines does a fine job with her big number, the one about how if a Harris pat means a Paris hat, she'll just be faithful in her fashion. Probably the lesser parts of the show will get better with practice: after all, it takes time to polish style.