Stage

Cole Mining

Glorious music is the prime attraction for Appleseed's uneven revival of Cole Porter's High Society

The Broadway reconstruction of Cole Porter's great 1956 movie High Society made a resounding flop six years ago, temporarily sidelining the career of super-performer Melissa Errico. Following on the success of the "new" (reconstituted) Gershwin musical Crazy for You, this vehicle looked like it had everything going for it, especially its many immortal show tunes. The always intrepid Appleseed Productions, at their Atonement Lutheran Church stomping grounds, gives us a rare chance to see what High Society was up to.

To begin with, High Society does not completely belong to Cole Porter. The 1956 movie was a musicalization of Philip Barry's classic comedy The Philadelphia Story, a big success on Broadway (1938) that became a memorable MGM film (1940). On both stage and screen Katharine Hepburn played the lead, Tracy Samantha Lord, the spoiled, somewhat priggish heiress who must be prevented from marrying "the dullest man on earth." (Grace Kelly made her last film appearance as Tracy in the 1956 MGM movie High Society.) The former avant-garde playwright Arthur Kopit (Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad), who has lately turned to musical theater (Maury Yeston's Phantom), has preserved some of Barry's sharpest writing, which does not quite fit the tone of this show.

This means the cleverest scene in High Society is not musical. Heiress Tracy (played by Sarah Davies) is interviewing two vulgar intruders, writer Mike Connor (Josh Mele) and photographer Liz Imbrie (Shannon Tompkins), who have been brought under pretense to her Oyster Bay estate circa 1938. They are actually a reporting team from sleazy Spy magazine, hoping to expose the follies of the idle rich. On to their ruse, Tracy exaggerates the cliche of the snooty rich girl to parody their expectations as she skillfully plays cat and mouse with them, reassuring herself what she needs to know. The scene was written to let Hepburn razzle-dazzle 'em, but it also allows Davies some of her best moments.

The same scene outlines the show's complex sexual geometry. While Samantha is supposed to marry the arriviste George Kittredge (Roy vanNorstrand), given to lines like "I started out as a coal miner," everyone else in the cast is pulling for her to get back with C.K. Dexter Haven (Thomas J. Parker), her well-born ex-husband. (Cary Grant was Dexter in 1940, Bing Crosby in 1956.) Dexter's fans include Tracy's precocious but not obnoxious little sister Dinah (Amanda Vogue), her stately but not doddering mother (Pat Stone), her tippling and lecherous uncle Willie (John LaCasse) and her estranged and actually strange father Seth (John G. Seavers).

But once Tracy realizes there is a sensitive short-story writer within the coarse scandal journalist, she is diverted by Mike's charms. (Jimmy Stewart had this role in 1940, a still-thin Frank Sinatra in 1956.) At a key moment in the second act Tracy and Mike go skinny-dipping offstage. In earlier versions they were swimming with bathing suits on.

As this is a privileged household, even in the Depression, there is also a complement of servants, starting with the nearly speechless but observant butler Chester (William Edward White) and the four uniformed dancing and singing household maids. They form kind of a Greek chorus as well as a chorus line, but they had no anticipation in the stage play or movie. Nevertheless, the girls--Stacy (Judi Bova), Polly (Melissa Kuersteiner), Betty (Melissa Pearsall) and Sue (Natalie Galvin)--are guided by choreographer Shannon Tompkins in well-rehearsed and inventive routines.

Cole Porter was 64 but still in prime form when he supplied five of his best-ever songs to the score. The romantic duet "True Love," named for Dexter's boat, was Porter's last Top 40 hit in the first year of the reign of Elvis. Three others advance the action gracefully, such as the title tune, sung by the chorus/household staff, and Liz and Mike's cynical duet, "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" And Porter's verbal wit is at its peak with "Well, Did You Evah?" It was previously a duet for Dexter and Mike, but is now moved to the household staff, Tracy and Liz. One of the original songs, "Now You Has Jazz," has been thrown overboard because Louis Armstrong's cameo from the 1956 movie is no longer in the story, the action having been moved from Newport to Oyster Bay.

The new songs, while a pleasure to hear, are now often at odds with their setting. "Throwing a Ball Tonight," a brassy anthem written for Ethel Merman in Panama Hattie (1940), now misrepresents hoity Mrs. Lord. The 1928 hit "Let's Misbehave" from the now-forgotten show Paris is often seen in different contexts nowadays, but as fun as it is, it still feels out of character for Tracy before she has too much champagne. Oddest of all is the sultry "I Love Paris" from Can-Can (1953), now sung by pre-teen Dinah.

High Society presents constant staging problems, requiring the household staff to keep dragging furniture here and there between numbers. Yet there is considerable strength from romantic leads Davies and Parker, who really deliver in the duet "True Love," while Davies' best solo is the second act "It's All Right With Me." Alas, Davies is weakly directed by Jon Wilson; she occasionally looks as though she doesn't know what to do with her hand. Josh Mele as the Spy scribe comes across as a romantic threat with the second act's "You're Sensational," just as Pat Stone's mama Lord runs the steeplechase in the reprise of "Ridin' High." Also noteworthy are the scenic designs from Jon Wilson and Rose Viviano, which prudently fill wall panels with chic New Yorkerish cartoons to imply affluence.

This production runs through May 22. See Times Table for information.