‘Kiss Me, Kate’ Broadway Review: Will Chase, Kelli O’Hara Stay True To Cole Porter’s Fashion – In Their Way

For me, the production takes full flight with “I Hate Men,” about midway through the first act, when O’Hara (as Lilli as Shrew‘s Kate) delivers a full throated and beautifully arch takedown of what later generations would simply call patriarchy. “Kate” delivers this song with utter conviction – no sense of the I’m just a silly girl spouting off that earlier productions might have presented. In fact, despite some script doctoring by the talented composer-lyricist Amanda Green (she performed similar updating duties on her father Adolph Green’s On the Twentieth Century for a 2015 Roundabout revival), this Kiss Me, Kate feels as modern as anything from ’48 can. The updates seem mostly in tone and performance (and thankfully so – a “guns don’t kill people” joke proves just how hokey these explicit updates can be; better is Kate’s late-show song “I Am Ashamed That Women Are So Simple” shifting to “I Am Ashamed That People Are So Simple”).