Shakespeare, the Musical and Political Humour in Kiss Me, Kate Revived

  • Gabriela Iuliana COLIPCĂ-CIOBANU Dunarea de Jos University of Galati
Keywords: adaptation, intertextuality, performance, humour, gender, politics

Abstract

The present study focuses on Michael Blakemore’s turn-of-the-millennium revival for Broadway and the London stage of the 1948 musical comedy Kiss Me, Kate by Cole Porter (music and lyrics) and Bella and Samuel Spewack (book). The metatheatrical structure of Blakemore’s revival of this famous adaptation of Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew impresses, among other things, by the multiplication of intertextual links as it projects Porter and the Spewacks’ as well as Shakespeare’s ‘battles of the sexes’ against the realistically ‘painted’ background of a world populated by actors, gangsters and, as an element of novelty, politically-involved US army representatives. Thus, Blakemore’s directorial perspective on the text(s) in performance turns out to be thought-provoking, drawing the present-day audience’s attention to a wider range of gender, culture and power-related forms of conflict, and making excellent use of subversive humour, the mechanisms of which this study will explore, to subtly comment on history-shaping political ‘games’.

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Author Biography

Gabriela Iuliana COLIPCĂ-CIOBANU, Dunarea de Jos University of Galati

Associate professor, PhD. “Dunărea de Jos” University of Galaţi, Romania

Published
2025-05-06
How to Cite
COLIPCĂ-CIOBANU, G. (2025). Shakespeare, the Musical and Political Humour in Kiss Me, Kate Revived. Cultural Intertexts, 3, 6-31. Retrieved from https://gup.ugal.ro/ugaljournals/index.php/cultural-intertexts/article/view/8402
Section
Articles