HIGH SOCIETY by Cole Porter. Crucible, Sheffield to 26 January.

Sheffield

HIGH SOCIETY
by Cole Porter

Crucible Theatre To 26 January 2002
Runs 2hr 30min One interval

TICKETS 0114 249 6000
Review Timothy Ramsden 5 January

Elegant, if not so swelegant, revival of a late Porter song-hits show.We think of tabloid intrusions and exposees as modern developments, but they were as troublesome round the world half a century ago, where newspapers and democracy co-existed. In 1949 Akira Kurosawa set out to attack invented gossip in his film Scandal. A few years earlier American playwright Philip Barry had had a go at a couple of reluctant scandal sheet muckrakers setting out to tap the potential of the rich, famous and possibly irregular Lords - aristocrats in name and all but title – and write up The Philadelphia Story.

From being a Theatre Guild production, the play went to Hollywood, filmed by George Cukor with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant as the self-willed Tracy Samantha Lord and C K Dexter Haven. He's the man she left to marry someone more reliable before finding out over two and a half hours that reliability is a quality you can't always rely on when you want to have a life.

Cole Porter got his musical hands on the story late in his life, giving it an update to the late 1950s and injecting a stream of classy songs, performed by a dream cast including Louise Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra – a true-love, alphabet-order only star line-up.

The dream stops, back on stage, in Sheffield. Stephen Brimson Lewis provides a delightful setting: open space, classic lines and light colours suggest moneyed ease and social confidence. Jane How is as right in such a transatlantic world as she always is amid English stage affluence, while both Richard Durden as the kind-hearted family oddball and Vincent Brimble as the errant father whose secret life attracts the gossip, are fine.

But these are quite marginal characters. Of the central triangle only Mark Meadows's stolid George hits an appropriate note without apparent effort, in a world and a genre where the appearance of ease is vital. Add desultory choreography and the production, while never falling below adequacy, just shows how much more you need when taking on the core of 20th century American entertainment.

Margaret Lord: Jane How
Dinah Lord: Laura Van Hoof/Carla Kay
Tracy Lord: Jenna Russell
Uncle Willie: Richard Durden
C.K. Dexter Haven: Ian Duncan
Mike Connor: Keith Dunphy
Liz Imbrie: Kate Arneil
George Kittredge: Mark Meadows
Seth Lord: Vincent Brimble
Dancer/Butler/Mac the Night Watchman/ Party Guest: Alistair David
Dancer/Butler/Party Guest: Daniel Hinchliffe
Dancer/Maid/Party Guest: Lucie Pankhurst
Dancer/Maid/Party Guest: Leigh Constantine
Dancer/Maid Party Guest: Nicole Mowat

Director: Fiona Laird
Designer: Stephen Brimson Lewis
Lighting: Tim Mitchell
Musical Director: Will Barnett
Choreographer: Alexandra Reynolds

2002-01-21 08:59:34