#lilli vanessi

[aliesafenlock]

Susan Rigvava-Dumas as

Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca

Lilli Vanessi in Kiss me Kate

Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard

Lucy Harris in Jekyll & Hyde

@gwouinaelle @luvdegreen @mean-lesbians

@alicesbread @cooter-n-tooter

[offarawaysnfuturedays-inmydreams]

Marin Mazzie + theatre roles

Clara: Passion [1994] Mother: Ragtime [1998] Lilli Vanessi/Katharine: Kiss Me, Kate [1999] Lily Garland/Mildred Plotka: On the Twentieth Century [2005] Guenevere: Camelot [2008] Diana Goodman: Next to Normal [2010] Margaret White: Carrie [2012] Anna Leonowens: The King and I [2016]

"The whole thing has just been so extraordinary for me and it just continues to be full of joy...getting back to work was just so, so very, very important." –2016 MetroFocus interview

[mindibindi]

💋 | “Highly Kissable” | 💋

[gongdaseulgi]

“Thou JERK!”

~ Lilli Vanessi, Kiss Me, Kate

[jbthegift]

It’s one of theatre’s great love songs to itself: to onstage energy and backstage bickering, song and dance and break-a-leg, egos and ensemble, sweaty tights and Shakespeare. Add to that director Trevor Nunn’s long love affair with both the American musical and the Bard, the swoonably brilliant Cole Porter songs, the perennial theme of warring couples, and Chichester’s talent for pizzazz on the big stage, and it could hardly fail.

It certainly doesn’t. For a start, Hannah Waddingham is Lilli Vanessi, the diva who must play Katharina in the fictional musical-within-a-play of the Taming of the Shrew. She is always a force of nature whether in Spamalot or Sondheim, and here the full range of her brilliance has scope.

She deploys a roundedly beautiful voice in lyrical moments, the lower register having the ability to make the sparsest male hair stand on end; yet will roar, growl, and at one point even burp, sprawl akimbo and temporarily suspend all feminine dignity. She is mesmerising.

She could make most leading men look faded, but Alex Bourne is Fred Graham / Petruchio, and he is all man: sonorous and macho-basso. Terry King, the fight director, has them hurling, punching, slapping, spanking and suffering painful half-nelsons in kick-me Kate battles — their first dressing-room spat melting into a happily reminiscent Wunderbar. The chemistry is all there: that magnetic, Noël Coward-like fizz that Porter recognised in the authors of the book, the equally fiery ex-couple Sam and Bella Spewack.

Stephen Mear’s genius as a choreographer (remember Crazy for You) blends authentically silly period showbiz moves with modern edge. Less tap here, but when it comes it blows your head off. Nunn’s finicky, theatre-maker’s care achieves the tricky dual vision of the “onstage” sequences, as what should be happening diverges, in Vanessi’s rages, into things that shouldn’t be happening at all and must be covered up with a quavering “I know not what to say” from Paul Grunert’s Baptista.

And Robert Jones’s design (within and before a showy proscenium arch, for this is an Old Vic collaboration due to go up there later) uses an unexpected simple trick: various rooms and a great tree all made of filmy muslin are drawn aloft out of boxes by the cast, as if in a conjuring trick. Theatre magic, see?

[ladiesoftheatre]

“Of course, I’m awfully glad that mother deemed to marry father, but I hate men!”

Day 114: Lilli Vanessi (Kiss Me Kate)

[karina-sometimes]

Hello, I hear you do song recs! :) I'm auditioning for Lilli and Lois in Kiss Me Kate (one audition song for each character) and I'm interested to hear which songs you think could work for them. Thank you so much!

For Lilli:

I Hate Him from Carnival! is pretty much perfect :)

Never from On the Twentieth Century

Too Late Now from Royal Wedding

Thinking of Him from Curtains

For Lois:

I Can Cook Too from On the Town

Easy Money from The Life

Naughty Baby from Crazy for You

The Sailor of My Dreams from Dames at Sea

I’m Going Back from Bells Are Ringing

Break legs!!

[behind-reality]

If I don't get to play Lilli Vanessi at least once in my life I will never be 100% content