Opening night! It's opening night!
Tonight is the first performance of Uni High's Spring Musical, Kiss Me Kate! The original Kiss Me Kate opened on Broadway on December 30, 1948 and ran for a total of 1,077 performances. We're doing the revival version of Kiss Me Kate, which opened on Broadway on Novermber 18, 1999 and closed on December 30, 2001 for a total of 881 performances. It's a wonderful play-within-a-play show, where the interior version of the play is a musical version of Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew. In addition to getting through the show, the actors have to deal with troubled relationships and gangsters! Sounds dramatic, but it's really very funny. After all, this is a musical comedy.
The show opens with this song, "Another Op'nin' Another Show" How fitting, right? It starts off with Pops and the stagehands singing, played by yours Uni truly Arch Robison, Sam LeRoy, Will Givens, and Elbert Wang. I love Pops' voice at :05. It's just so grandfatherly! He swings around the notes a bit, which is odd since I'm so used to hearing Arch sing them right on, but I like it. And then at :20 who should enter but none other than Hattie, my character! She's the dresser to the great Lilli Vanessi, played by Sarah Sutter in the Uni version.
I really like this Hattie a lot. She and I are very different in the way we perform and sing this song, but either way is still great! This Hattie's voice is very striking to me. It's almost always placed far back in her mouth, resulting in a dark tone that can sometimes sound gravely or harsh. In a way, this Hattie almost tricks you with her voice. But we'll get to that later because guess who comes in at :38? That's right! The Wardrobe Lady, played by Uni student and good friend of mine Hannah Johlas. I actually think this Wardrobe Lady and Hannah have very similar voices! Listen for yourself, first at :42 and then sometime this weekend at Uni to compare!
Back to Hattie. You can really hear the far placement of this Hattie's voice from :51-:57. Pay special attention to the line "Another pain where the ulcers grow!" That's really where you can hear it. Then, Hattie gets gravely with the next verse. "Four weeks you rehearse and rehearse! Three weeks and it couldn't be worse. One week, will it ever be right? Then out of the hat it's that big first night!"
You don't know how right that verse is until you've been in a show. Trust me. It's amazing how some shows can come together at all.
I love the way this Hattie sings her words, especially "rehearse," "couldn't," "worse," and "night." Rehearse is really gravely, and instead of being pronounced like "ree-herse" she sings it as "reh-hurse." "Couldn't" at 1:05 is almost swallowed, to create a very interesting sound, leading into the double-syllable pronunciation of "worse." Her "night" at 1:12 is swallowed like the "couldn't" but the vowel is also shaped and elongated differently. It's more like "naight" then "night." This Hattie's voice does sound a bit strained a few words before "night" but let me tell you, those are some difficult notes to hit, and even if you don't hit them quite right, it's the performance quality that really carries this song along. Any song, really. Perform well, and it doesn't really matter if you flub or falter a note here and there.
The little harmony section at 1:13 is really quite cool. It has almost an echo feel to it, with the men responding to Hattie before joining her. Hattie's riff at 1:22 is also very neat. This Hattie really makes this song her own. There's a lot of room for improv and individuality, and this riff is just the tip of this Hattie's iceberg.
And now the company comes in! They sing briefly, before busting into a dance break, lasting from 1:40-2:49, with a slight interlude of singing from 2:24-2:34. This video is a bit different from what the actual opening number is like. Some of the verses have been cut out, and this version has a whole lot more dancing than we have, haha. But that's ok! That just means you all will be (pleasantly) surprised when you see our version!
Once the dance break ends, everybody is pissed off and stressed out. Nothing is going right, they sing, and everyone is in a state of panic. That's when Hattie comes in, ready to soothe and calm everyone down, reminding them that it's just "another op'nin', another show." Here's Hattie's big moment to shine. Back comes the riff at 3:18 on both the words "another" and "show." Then this Hattie does something I haven't heard anyone else do. She adds in her own little "yeahs" and "ahs" and such, really giving a personal touch to this song. I like it a lot. It's not what I do, but that doesn't mean I can't appreciate it.
Now this Hattie really struts her stuff! Remember how earlier I mentioned she was tricking you with her gravely voice? Yup. Here it is. Hattie starts to belt at 3:36, making the song her own by switching up the notes, such as during the line "and hold your heart." I also like that she barely uses any consonants when she says that line as well. "Holdya harht!" Haha! She also doesn't say the full lines. For example, the next line in the song is "It's curtain time and away we go!" She sings, "It's curtain time, away we go!" Not too big of a difference, but when you combine it with a few note changes it's a very different approach indeed. Now, one thing I can't quite do that this Hattie is great at is whistling. No, not that whistling. Whistling is that sort of high belt sound. The "we" at 3:43 is what I'm talking about. It sounds fantastic in this video, but I might sound more like a blown-out soprano or opera singer, which isn't bad, just isn't the whistling sound most people might be used to.
All in all, two very different interpretations and performances, but neither one less fabulous than the other. Come support Uni Theatre and see Kiss Me Kate this weekend! Hope to see you all there!
