Kiss Me Kate - Barbican / Cinema Release

If Sher directs then the show will be 4 hours long, with 15 minute set changes.

The casting team and producers/director clearly have faith in his vocal abilities so...

I mean non-musical theatre actors have turned in some amazing performances before in the medium.

It'll be nice to see Block leading a show in London too. I'm glad that we've been pulling so many big MT names from New York to London in the last few years. No, they may not be well known or big draws to the general public in the UK, but it's nice for theatre fans to see them without having to make a huge trip abroad.

That depends very much on the role and the show. Fred needs to be able to negotiate the tricky melody of So in Love, the bombast of Wunderbar and the patter of We Open in Venice just for starters. You need and accomplished singer, preferably one who looks good in doublet and hose!

I'm glad to see I0'm by no means the only person who read the casting announcement & went "Adrian Dunbar? What?". He seems very unsuited to the role. I'd expect the role to be cast with someone in his 40s or early 50s with an operatic or near-operatic voice, not a 65 year old with minimal musicals experience. I think I'll be sticking to my memories of the Broadway transfer in 2002, the Old Vic in 2012 & ON/WNO 2015-18, all of which had far more suitable leading men.


Since even most opera singers' voices are likely to be deteriorating in their mid-60s, I'd be amazed if Dunbar's voice could be better now at 65 than when he was in his 30s or 40s.

He strikes me as too boyish. We need at least one hunk in this show if Fred isn't going to be one. 

I fear you may have misunderstood that I was taking the mickey…

I am a firm believer that this craft is called musical theatre because both components need to be fully honed and honoured, musicality and vocal ability count only as much as acting skills.

Great acting through song is definitely what I personally look for in musical theatre, that's what moves me more than a million riffs or notes held for - how long was it? 42 seconds? - but that kind of great acting through song can only come when the singing is solid and accomplished enough that the actor can comfortably "worry" only about telling the story and inhabiting their character.



To make a concrete example, I believe Jonathan Bailey is a much better actor than he is a singer. But, thinking back to his performances in 'The last 5 years' and in 'Company' (both of which I loved), he still sang on pitch, didn't run out of breath, and had clear enough diction throughout, and that established a solid platform for him to act the proverbial sh*t out of those roles.



Unfortunately, as far as Mr Dunbar is concerned, what I could infer from that video is that he is not an accomplished singer, and you may have "taken the mickey" out of me, but you did not quite provide evidence that he is a great actor who can, because of outstanding acting skills, make an audience forget his vocals are a bit on the shaky side.   

I've been singing all my life, doesn't mean I should be on the stage!

Eh, there’ll be deals along the way. It’s a massive theatre to sell. I saw Anything Goes and Strange Loop both centre forward stalls for comfortably under £40.

It's a MASSIVE show - cast of 50, full orchestra, Catherine Zuber costumes.

I'm not surprised they've gone high to start with - Kiss Me Kate is Barbican bread and butter with the RSC connection so I think it'll actually do really well.
It'll be on rush, there'll be offers - there always is for everything...

Don't expect a cast of 50 - what it actually says is: "a company of over 50 including a full-scale orchestra"

Trafalgar Entertainment are notorious for blithely talking about a 'company of 50', whilst having a very loose definition of 'company' which goes beyond the cast, normally including the musicians and sometimes others involved in the production.

For Anything Goes they said "Featuring a 50 strong cast and ensemble of the finest we have to offer on the London stage and a full-sized live orchestra" when there were around 32 in the cast, including understudies. I don't know how many musicians there were - but I think the orchestrations used on Broadway was for 16.

The King and I at the Dominion says "this gloriously lavish production will feature a world-class company of over 50 West End and Broadway performers" and whilst the full cast doesn't seem to have yet been announced even though it opens tomorrow (it's certainly not on the website) it's only going to be through the double cast of Siamese children that it will get anywhere near 50.

Don't get me wrong a cast of 30 plus a 20 piece orchestra would be great - but it ain't going to be a cast of 50 and may not even be 50 cast and musos combined. For info the most recent Broadway revival was a cast of c26 and c17 musicians.