High Society

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JOYCE MCMILLAN on HIGH SOCIETY at the Festival Theatre, Edinburgh, for The Scotsman 7.3.13.
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3 stars ***

IN A WORLD where musicals grow ever more over-the-top – ever more smothered in spectacle, and huge teams of performers with perfect bodies and smiles – there’s something refreshingly straightforward, dramatic and down-to-earth about the new Music & Lyrics version of Cole Porter’s High Society that plays at the Festival Theatre this week.

In a sense, of course, down-to-earth is a strange phrase to use about High Society, the famously light-and-frothy story – based on Philip Barry’s 1939 play The Philadelphia Story – about wealthy Long Island heiress Tracy Lord, who is about to make a sensible second marriage to an up-and-coming businessman called George when fate intervenes, in the shape of her playboy ex-husband Dexter, two sparky young journalists from a gossip magazine, and her smart little sister Dinah, who, although only about 12, knows a bad match when she sees one.

Yet Anna Linstrum’s lightweight production – with a swiftly-changing set of creamy-coloured pillars and doorways by Francis O’Connor – is so strongly focussed on the show’s storyline that it sometimes seems a little forgetful of the music. The singing is distinctly uneven, and the playlist an odd jumble of songs written for and at home in this story – like the show’s great ballad duet True Love, and the famous What A Swell Party This is – and other, borrowed Cole Porter numbers which seem to have been shoehorned in to stretch the show to two-and-a-half hours.

What’s truly delicious about this production, though, is the performance of the chorus of 11 servants, who dance, sing and bond with the audience magnificently, making the most of Andrew Wright’s fine, bright choreography. And there are two vivid, finely sung performances, too, from Alex Young and Daniel Boys as the journalists, Liz and Mike, whose irreverent presence helps change Tracy’s life for good; and who find one another in the end, in the most heartwarming love story of the evening.

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