In May 2025, Great Performances raises the curtain on its eighth annual “Broadway’s Best” line-up, premiering on PBS (check local listings), pbs.org/gperf, and the PBS app. The line-up, which coincides with Great Performances receiving a 2025 Tony Honor for Excellence in the Theatre recognizing the series’ contributions to the Broadway industry, concludes with Cole Porter’s classic musical comedy Kiss Me, Kate (Friday, May 30 at 9 p.m.).
Tony winner Stephanie J. Block (The Cher Show), in her West End debut, and Adrian Dunbar star as feuding, divorced stage stars Lilli Vanessi and Fred Graham, who are thrown together in a touring production of a musical based on Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. Tony winner Bartlett Sher directs the production, filmed from the Barbican during summer 2024.
Before you enjoy Kiss Me, Kate, check out this starry list of actresses who have played diva extraordinaire Lilli Vanessi.
1) Marin Mazzie
Marin Mazzie scored her third Tony nomination for her fiery portrayal of Lilli Vanessi in the 1999 revival of Kiss Me, Kate, which reunited her with her Ragtime co-star Brian Stokes Mitchell as Fred Graham. The production, directed by Michael Blakemore and featuring choreography by Kathleen Marshall, won three Tony Awards, including Best Revival of a Musical.
Critics praised Mazzie’s fierce comic timing and lush soprano voice. “As Lilli Vanessi, the stage diva turned movie diva now making a stage comeback…she is as much a theatrical caricature as a Hirschfeld sketch, drawn in big, looping lines,” Ben Brantley raved in his New York Times review, adding that when Mazzie sings “So in Love” and other ballads, “her soprano shimmers like polished silver.”
Mazzie received an Olivier Award nomination when she made her West End debut in the show in 2001. “Kiss Me, Kate is truly the most fun I have ever had on stage,” she said in this Broadwaybox.com article.
2) Chita Rivera
A year before razzle-dazzling audiences as Velma Kelly in the original Broadway production of Chicago, Chita Rivera played Lilli Vanessi in a 1974 production of Kiss Me, Kate at North Shore Music Theatre in Beverly, Massachusetts. The Harvard Crimson declared her “a properly fiery and recalcitrant Katherine-Lilli.” Hal Linden, who would soar to TV fame as the titular NYC police captain in Barney Miller the following year, portrayed Fred Graham. The cast included two additional actors on the cusp of 1970s sitcom stardom: Bonnie Franklin, who played the divorced mother of Mackenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli in Norman Lear’s groundbreaking sitcom One Day at a Time, and Eddie Mekka, best known as Carmine Ragusa – aka “The Big Ragu” — in Garry Marshall’s feel-good comedy Laverne & Shirley.
3) Merle Dandridge
Merle Dandridge (Broadway’s Spamalot and Tarzan, HBO Max’s The Last of Us) portrayed Lilli Vanessi in Pasadena Playhouse’s 2014 production of Kiss Me, Kate, starring Wayne Brady as Fred Graham. Directed by Sheldon Epps and featuring a primarily Black cast, this reimagined Kate viewed the story through a Black lens, following the characters as they tour the American South in Swinging the Shrew, a musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew.
In this Pasadena Weekly article, Epps explains that the production paid homage to the trailblazing African American touring troupes of the early 20th century who did adaptations of the classics and Shakespeare plays, such as Voodoo Macbeth (the Federal Theatre Project’s 1936 retelling of Macbeth, reset in the Caribbean and directed by Orson Welles) and Swingin’ the Dream (a musical adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that transferred to Broadway in 1939 starring Louis Armstrong as Bottom, Dorothy Dandridge as Second Pixie, and Butterfly McQueen as Puck).
Enjoy a behind-the-scenes look at the 2014 Pasadena Playhouse production of Kiss Me, Kate here.
4) Kelli O’Hara
Kelli O’Hara garnered her seventh Tony nomination for her portrayal of Lilli Vanessi in Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2019 revival of Kiss Me, Kate, directed by Scott Ellis, co-starring Will Chase as Fred Graham, and featuring choreography by Warren Carlyle.
Many actresses who play Lilli Vanessi consider Marin Mazzie’s titanic portrayal in the 1999 Broadway revival to be the blueprint for the role, and O’Hara is no exception. In this Seattle Times article, she calls Mazzie’s performance “one of the most inspirational things I’d ever seen.” O’Hara paid homage to Mazzie, who died in September 2018 at age 57 of ovarian cancer, at every performance. When she made her entrance at the top of the show, she wore the hat worn by Mazzie in the 1999 revival. Costume designer Jeff Mahshie borrowed the poignant piece of Broadway history from Goodspeed Opera House as a tribute to Martin Pakledinaz’s vibrant Tony-winning costumes in the 1999 production.
Watch Kelli O’Hara and cast perform highlights from the Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2019 revival of Kiss Me, Kate here. O’Hara’s grand entrance wearing Marin Mazzie’s hat appears five seconds into the video.
5) Stephanie J. Block
Throughout her illustrious career, Stephanie J. Block has played her fair share of divas: gloriously tragic silent film star Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, sassy Reno Sweeney in Anything Goes, and über-superstar Cher in The Cher Show, to name just a few. So naturally, the role of imperious stage star Lilli Vanessi fit her like a glove. Yet Block was surprised when director Bartlett Sher offered her the role as it’s usually played by a lyric soprano and Block is known for her powerhouse belting. After watching Franco Zeffirelli’s 1967 movie version of The Taming of the Shrew starring real-life tempestuous married couple Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton upon Sher’s recommendation, she was ready to take center stage as Lilli. She didn’t channel Taylor for her Lilli, but did find inspiration in other iconic leading ladies.
“Barbara Stanwyck was one of my inspirations. A lot of my physical choices and facial expression I pulled from Lucille Ball, because I found so much comedy and humor in this script,” Block says in this TheaterMania interview.
Watch a preview of Great Performances: Kiss Me, Kate here.
6) Rachel York
Rachel York played Lilli in the U.S. national tour of director Michael Blakemore’s Tony-winning Kate from 2001-2002, opposite Rex Smith as Fred Graham. Talkin’ Broadway praised her “showstopping performance…and intensely physical and lustful rendition of “I Hate Men.’”
Following the national tour, York joined the show’s West End engagement, which starred Brent Barrett as Fred Graham, for its final months at London’s Victoria Palace Theatre. Great Performances filmed the production, which aired in 2003 during the series’ 30th anniversary season. It wasn’t York’s first appearance on Great Performances: in 1995, excerpts of York’s performance as the ditzy mobster mistress Norma Cassidy in the Broadway adaptation of Victor/Victoria were featured in the Great Performances presentation of Julie Andrews: Back on Broadway.
Learn more about Great Performances’ 2003 broadcast of Kiss Me, Kate here.
7) Hannah Waddingham
Emmy winner Hannah Waddingham (Ted Lasso, Game of Thrones, Tom Jones on Masterpiece) portrayed Lilli Vanessi in a 2012 Chichester Festival Theater production of Kiss Me, Kate. Directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Alex Bourne as Fred, the acclaimed revival transferred to London’s Old Vic in November 2012. “An ideally cast Waddingham is clearly having a ball and the effect is infectious,” Variety wrote of her performance, which garnered a 2013 Olivier Award nomination. Waddingham, who began her career on the stage, also scored Olivier noms as Lady of the Lake and Desirée Armfeldt in U.K. productions of Spamalot and A Little Night Music, respectively.
Watch Hannah Waddingham and Alex Bourne perform “Wunderbar” from Kiss Me, Kate at the 2013 Olivier Awards here. (Video courtesy of Official London Theatre)
Great Performances “Broadway’s Best” line-up is part of Broadway and Beyond, a special collection of theater and arts programming from The WNET Group premiering on-air, online, and YouTube. If you live in the tri-state area, visit thirteen.org/broadway for more information.
Elisa Lichtenbaum | @elisavontap
Elisa Lichtenbaum is a Senior Writer at The WNET Group, where she is editor of the monthly THIRTEEN program guide and writes about arts and culture.
