Review: High Society – Edinburgh Playhouse

Cole Porter’s High Society arrives at the Edinburgh Playhouse with a strong pedigree. Fresh from a summer season at the Barbican, this touring revival comes courtesy of Sir Howard Panter’s Trafalgar Theatre Productions alongside Brian and Dayna Lee. Drawing on Philip Barry’s 1939 play The Philadelphia Story as well as the 1956 MGM film, the production deploys Arthur Kopit’s book, touched up with additional material by Bob Martin and Susan Birkenhead.

The production makes quite a first impression. Touring shows often look dwarfed inside the Playhouse’s cavernous 3,000-seat auditorium, but director Rachel Kavanaugh and set designer Tom Rogers have conjured a magnificent pile. Rogers skips digital projections in favour of solid, practical architecture that gives the Lord family estate real physical weight. Bathed in Howard Hudson’s lighting—shifting gently from crisp coastal daylight to balmy twilight—the stage looks properly expensive. It looks better still when populated by a company dressed in Jon Morrell’s period tailoring, emerging en masse for an opening number that reimagines Louis Armstrong’s iconic calypso, ‘High Society’, as a full-throttle ensemble anthem.

The production makes quite a first impression. Touring shows often look dwarfed inside the Playhouse’s cavernous 3,000-seat auditorium, but director Rachel Kavanaugh and set designer Tom Rogers have conjured a magnificent pile.

From there, the staging settles into classic screwball territory. Hours before Philadelphia heiress Tracy Lord is due to walk down the aisle with a respectable, self-made executive, her ex-husband and a pair of tabloid reporters descend on the family estate to engineer chaos. Cue jealousy, panic, and a steady flow of vintage champagne. Purists will find their cinematic favourites accounted for—including ‘True Love’ and the raucous party piece ‘Well, Did You Evah!’—alongside interpolated catalogue additions like ‘Let’s Misbehave’ and ‘Ridin’ High’. Kopit may pack in far more of Porter’s songs than the screen original ever attempted, yet the script never gets bogged down. There’s less sentiment compared to the movie, but the text holds its own, trading cinematic polish for the kinetic bounce of a witty stage farce.

Sound in the pit, strain in the leads

Down in the pit, the artistic craft matches this visual scale. Touring a full 13-piece orchestra has become an endangered practice on the regional circuit, but the investment pays off. Under tour musical director Dan McLaughlin—working with Stephen Ridley’s musical supervision—the band delivers Gareth Valentine’s arrangements and Larry Blank and Mark Cumberland’s orchestrations with punch and swing. They strike an effective balance between an agile jazz outfit and the acoustic muscle needed to carry across three tiers.

Elsewhere, I have notes. First, let me say I am a big fan of understudies. When I first reviewed Hamilton in London, alternates dominated the cast and gave a definitive performance. Here, the picture is more complicated. With billed leads Helen George and Julian Ovenden indisposed, Isobel Snaas and Andrew Coshan stepped up as Tracy Lord and C.K. Dexter Haven for the Edinburgh press night.

Both actors handle the text well: Coshan gives Haven an easy, bruised charm, while Snaas captures the brittle defensiveness of an heiress unused to being questioned. Yet, Porter’s cascading melodies are demanding. Coshan’s voice is agile but misses richness in his lower register, while Snaas lacks the horsepower to clear the brass in the bigger numbers.

Down in the pit, the artistic craft matches this visual scale. Touring a full 13-piece orchestra has become an endangered practice on the regional circuit, but the investment pays off.

The supporting players, however, lift the roof. The ever-sensational Carly Mercedes Dyer, playing photographer Liz Imbrie, stands ready to steal the show at all times. Her rendition of ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ is technically faultless and utterly irresistible. Paired with Freddie Fox’s reporter Mike Connor for ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?’, choreographer Anthony Van Laast gives them plenty of room to play. They may not entirely convince as a pair swept away by sudden romance, but their timing as a song-and-dance double act is immaculate.

Fox, making his musical theatre debut, is wisely directed away from a cinematic pastiche. He sidesteps potentially fatal Sinatra comparisons by leaning into a warmer, less cynical persona. He is not a first-rate vocalist—his rendition of “Sensational” suffers from excessive gurning and odd phrasing—yet he can hold a tune and carries the room with abundant charm. Meanwhile, Nigel Lindsay is a treat as the scotch-soaked Uncle Willie, bringing dry wit and surprising musical swing to an eccentric part that could easily curdle into sleaze.

Pulled teeth and summer bubbles

Where the production falters is in dampening the narrative. In attempting to smooth away the outdated class attitudes of the original script, it sacrifices old-school comedic bite without finding new teeth elsewhere. George Kittredge suffers the most from this polite scrubbing. The production seems (rightly) embarrassed by the original text’s treatment of him as a pretentious, social-climbing stooge, yet fails to give him enough humanity to elicit sympathy or enough villainy to work as a proper foil. David Seadon-Young works hard on this sticky wicket, but the writing leaves him a tad stranded.

Yet, missed opportunities aside, High Society makes an undeniably good night in the stalls. Anchored by that magnificent 13-piece band, top-tier staging, and standout turns, this is an airy, generous, and thoroughly entertaining diversion. Indeed, it delivers exactly what an old-school musical should: two and a half hours of sunny theatrical joy where the champagne never goes flat.

All Images: High Society_Pamela Raith Photography