Kiss Me, Kate Revival 1999

There were actually those who thought Cole Porter, Broadway's fountain of divine wit and sophistication, had run dry by that winter of 1948.  Though his recent offerings like Something For The Boys and Mexican Hayride were far from flops, his kind of thin-plotted musical comedy where the book and the songs often had little more than a passing acquaintance with each other was being overshadowed by the enormous success of Rodgers and Hammerstein's integrated musical dramas.  Even in the lightest of entertainments, the public was becoming more and more enthralled by musicals with strong plots and well-developed characters.