In November 1990 the Bristol Light Opera Club presented Cole Porter’s “scintillating musical” Kiss Me Kate at the Bristol Hippodrome, nightly at 7.30pm with a Saturday matinee. Ken Colbeck and Susan Smith led the company as Fred Graham and Lilli Vanessi. Chairman Alan Seager welcomed patrons to the Club’s “57th Season”, recalling that “a young Miss Cynthia Glover grew up with us” and that Louise Plowright had “played the lead with us only a few years ago”, and promised a Cole Porter revue at the Colston Hall the following April. The programme included a mock programme for the show-within-a-show, The Taming of the Shrew “by Fred Graham and Bill Shakespeare” at the “Ford Theatre, Baltimore”, and thanked Joyce Greenhalgh “for Tobie the Old English Sheep dog”.
Cast
- Fred Graham / Petruchio — Ken Colbeck / Jeff Prescott
- Harry Trevor / Baptista — Bob Bradshaw
- Lois Lane / Bianca — Melanie Evans
- Ralph (Stage Manager) — Andrew Capes
- Lilli Vanessi / Katherine — Susan Smith / Gina Vardy
- Hattie — Irish Shopland
- Paul — Mike Purnell
- Bill Calhoun / Lucentio — Stewart McPherson
- First Gangster — Paul O’Connor
- Second Gangster — Alexander Turaslewicz
- Harrison Howell — Andrew Clark
- Gremio (Suitor) — Matt Jeanes
- Hortensio (Suitor) — Patrick O’Hare