PORT TOWNSEND — Cole Porter wrote spicy, sweet, whip-smart, double entendre-filled songs. “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love),” “Night and Day,” “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” — these and a stash of rarer gems from the Porter songbook are whirled together into Key City Public Theatre’s summer fling opening this week.
But we must first get the title out of the way. It’s “The Decline and Fall of the Entire World as Seen through the Eyes of Cole Porter,” a revue set in another tempestuous time in history: the early 1940s.
The Cole Porter musical, as it will henceforth be called, takes us into “the tempest of a tumbling world,” as Key City artistic director Denise Winter puts it.
This being Porter, we go directly to a party in New York City’s Greenwich Village. There, the silky performers sing, dance, brag and sashay: Key City’s own Christa Holbrook and guest artists Selena Tibert, Matthew Alexander and Michael Covert. Surrounding them with music are Linda Dowdell at the baby grand piano, Maryann Tapiro on cello and Lou Babik and Clover Coupe-Carlin switching off on drums.
The revue opens Friday and plays through June 30 at the Key City Playhouse, 419 Washington St., which is fitted out with cabaret seating. Show times are 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays and 2:30 p.m. Sundays; tickets range from $24 to $29 except the pay-what-you-wish performances this Sunday and next Thursday, June 13.
Information and purchase are at keycitypublic theatre.org and 360-385-5278, or patrons can stop by the playhouse between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. Wednesday through Friday. On performance nights and afternoons, the theater opens an hour before show time for ticket sales at the door.
On Thursday, the night before all of this, there’s a special fundraising event: the 66 Women Producers party and show.
Each year the nonprofit Key City Public Theatre stages this event, which turns 66 women from across the region into sponsors; they partake in food and drink at a Port Townsend residence and then see the show together.
A few tickets are still available for Thursday’s 6 p.m. party and 7:30 p.m. performance; they’re $66 at 360-385-5278 and keycity publictheatre.org.
The Cole Porter cabaret will be an immersive musical experience, Winter said, with the cast members sauntering up the center aisle, appearing suddenly in the side entrances and dancing with one another everywhere. There are slinky dresses, tuxedos, French bread, oysters and local place names dropped into the lyrics — which are all about the many kinds of love.
“Porter was so prolific. There is so much he wrote” about that topic, said pianist-bandleader Dowdell. To her mind, love is what keeps this musical, which premiered in the middle of the 1960s, fresh.
Two relatively young members of the Key City Public Theatre crew are at the helm. Director Bry Kifolo and stage manager Genevieve Barlow are artistic apprentices in their 20s; Barlow directed April’s production, “Men on Boats,” and Kifolo led last November-December’s “Every Christmas Story Ever Told.”
Crew members also include choreographer Maggie Jo Bulkley, costume designer Ciel Pope, lighting designer Karen Anderson and set designer Terry Tennesen.
Kifolo, a devotee of Porter and New York City, wants her show to be a party, a release from the workaday world.
“If you want to have some fun, if you’ve been in a rut, if the news is taking hold of you, this is your chance to let go of all that,” she said.
When asked which songs she likes best, the director gushed that she loves them all — but after a beat, she decided the number at the close of Act I is her favorite.
“It’s a cheeky moment,” is all Kifolo would reveal.
In a cabaret such as this, Dowdell added, each song is its own three-act jewel. The stories come tumbling out in the basement apartment set of Act I; another set glitters in Act II, which is set in a Park Avenue penthouse the morning after.
The Cole Porter revue is part of a summer that will also have Key City’s annual Shakespeare in the Park production.
This year the comedy “The Merry Wives of Windsor” will be staged at Port Townsend’s Chetzemoka Park from Aug. 2 through Aug. 25. Admission is pay-what-you-wish to the Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings performances. For more about the rest of the season, visit keycitypublic theatre.org.
