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Happy 20th anniversary-and what a year it will be.  First Up-Kiss Me Kate.

It's Shakes time once again in O-Town and this years company pleased the crowd with an impressive rendition of Cole Porter's musical Kiss Me Kate.   Lest anyone forget, this is a musical from 1949 and it was done in exactly that period.  Orlando Shakes didn't take many liberties with changing up the setting or updating the time-period.   I guess traditionalists will be very pleased. 

In case you may be wondering if a Shakespeare company can sing, let me ease your mind.  Not only can they sing, but they can sing, dance and perform Taming of the Shrew all well and all at the same time.    Steven Patterson and Jean Tafler whom we know well from many other Shakes plays, were more than a little impressive with their singing voices.  Leading a cast of incredibly talented performers, Fred and Lilli (Steven and Jean) took us on a shrews journey toward love,  happiness and more than a few bouts of riotous laughter.

Notable highlights: 

-The group number "Too Darn Hot", led by the all too hot Andrew Cho.  It's Cho's debut performance with O-Shakes and I'm sure we will see great things from this talented performer.    Great troupe choreography,  I was surprised to see this caliber of dancing from this company.  It's just not something they have attempted before.

-Dana Barathy as Lois/Bianca belted out a cabaret performance of "Always True to You", with passion and gusto as her voice reverberated from one side of the hall to the other. 

-Jean's performance of Lilli's "I Hate Men" was just hilarious and had the audience on the edge of their seats. 

-A big wow to Bob Dolan and Brandon Roberts for playing thoroughly vaudevillian gangsters.   Over the last couple of years, we have really come to appreciate Brandon's performances (Comedy and As You).  In many ways he brings to the stage, the best of what we love about O-Shakes.  Following in the footsteps of our past favorites like Eric and Timothy, Brandon plays the comic relief and oh what a great job he does.    He-yet again- hits the mark as the second gangster.    Bob and Brandon's performance of "Brush Up Your Shakespeare" was simply magnificiant. 

I couldn't find a whole lot of opportunities to mention about this performance, the only one that comes to mind is that the beginning of the first act was a bit sluggish.   "Wunderbar" just didn't grab me and I remained unimpressed until "We Open in Venice" at which point the first act really got rolling. 

This year promises to be another great for Orlando Shakespeare, and happy 20th, I'm glad that I was there for at least 10 of them.