‘No Theatre Guild Attraction Are We’: Kiss Me, Kate and the Politics of the Integrated Musical

Abstract

In this article I use psychoanalytic feminist theory to consider the integration of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate (1948). Despite often being considered his most integrated musical the show seems to flaunt its undecidability, its resistance to integration between number and narrative. The dominance of the narrative over the numbers is a motif that dominates all standard accounts of musical theatre history, central to the notion of integration. This account pivots around 1943, the date of the opening of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma! Musicals before 1943 tend to be considered either as precursors to Oklahoma! or are retrospectively dismissed in the light of what was to come. This article builds Martin Sutton's suggestion that the relationship between the narrative and the musical numbers is a battle between psychic freedom and social repression, but rejects his conclusion that the narrative must win out. I look once again at Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate to reveal its instabilities and dis-integration, using concepts drawn from Cixous and Kristeva to argue for a sexual–political content to this musical's play with form.