‘Porterian Frankenstein’
Good things are said to come in threes: meals, times of day, the very structure of literature. And yet the Furies are three – bloodthirsty, vengeance-seeking, wild – so make of that what you will.
The Barbican is certainly hoping for the former. Anything Goes returned twice and moved to the West End, and Kiss Me, Kate was doused in incendiary praise (from none other than myself). Sticking with Cole Porter, they dust off Richard Eyre’s West End production from 1987, adapted again for Broadway with extra music and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead in 1998, updating even more so here.
But why would they need to? You might ask. Well, High Society has had a complex past, appropriately. Firstly, Philip Barry’s play The Philadelphia Story premiered in 1939, featuring Katharine Hepburn. Then the 1940 talking film, anchored by Hepburn, was subsequently turned into the beloved 1956 musical film with Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Louis Armstrong. A personal favourite and much beloved, it’s hard to follow. Kelly’s last before she literally swanned off to marry a prince (how very Tracy Lord of her). So Rachel Kavanaugh has a bit of a Frankenstein job on her hands, filling in songs where the film lacks, rounding out characters who were previously 1950s celebrities basically playing themselves (looking at you, Sinatra), and tying all that history and Porterian lovelessness in a nice bow.
If you’ve missed any of the play/film/musicalfilm/musical/musicals, a quick refresh: the Lords – mother, father, and two daughters – are blue bloods of the first order, avoiding scandal only just. Tracy Lord is marrying for a second time, to a man terrible dull, and in one never-ending wedding party she flirts with a reporter commissioned to cover the nuptials and her ex-husband. Hardly Eugene O’Neill, but hence why Porter’s wit and music is so integral.
We have our own constellation of nearer but still twinkling stars. Julian Ovenden growls and rolls as Dexter Haven, the boat-designing, romantic ex-husband. A vocal master, he bobs and swings around like a skiff in high water, never submerging – confident, satirical, the worst possible ex. Freddie Fox (of the Fox clan) makes his musical theatre debut as Mike Connor, the plain-speaking (sort of) short-story writer and journalist. Again we get rougher suavity and good singing chops, although the comedy is a bit lacking in the iconic “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”. Across from him, the rising star Carly Mercedes Dyer never quite lands the sharpness of photographer Liz Imbrie but sounds punchy in her extra song “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”. Felicity Kendal is almost a pastiche of herself at this point, but a great improvement on the mother Lord of the film, with edge and knowing looks aplenty. Helen George as Tracy Lord herself struggles to find the effortless vocal quality Porter demands, crafting a character who is rigid but never really thaws – gorgeous but never natural. Nigel Lindsay as the drunken Uncle Willie is, well, just that – bumbling and wisecracking, but not quite enough crooning for “Now You Has Jazz”.
Jon Morrell’s costumes are as lavish as you would expect, and Tom Rogers has palatial, almost operatic gardens and columns descending flatpack, just as you knew they would. Things slot down, 1950s skirts ruche up, champagne is drunk – it’s High Society just as imagined. Anthony Van Laast’s choreography adds much-needed movement to the story, with a particularly good drunken revel scene of crumpled taffeta and lost tiaras.
In all this snipping and adding, bit from here and some from there, the soul of the production is lacking. Some odd casting and directing choices, plus additional Porter songs coming out of nowhere, feel unconnected to the story – unlike the hits of the last two years. Yes, we need escapism in these dark days, but this blind orgy of wealth and its predictable staging feels all too guaranteed, all too expected, all too routine.
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