High Society, Old Vic, review: 'What a swell party - eventually'

Well, Did You Evah? A show that looked destined for a dutiful three stars come interval time turns itself round so entirely in the second half that Kevin Spacey’s final piece of programming for the Old Vic may prove one of the hits of the summer.

The 1998 stage musical of High Society, with a book by Arthur Kopit, is based directly on Philip Barry’s original 1939 stage play The Philadelphia Story, but uses most of the Cole Porter songs of the 1956 musical film version – plus a scattering of other Porter numbers. The plot presents itself as arch and gossamer thin, demanding that we care about a spoilt socialite, Tracy Lord (Kate Fleetwood), on the eve of her wedding to a dullard who holds no apparent attraction to her - she certainly doesn’t need the money – while she’s thrown over her first husband CK Dexter Haven (Rupert Young), seemingly out of petulance.

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So artificial do proceedings seem in the first hour that I wished the theatre had jettisoned its current in-the-round layout, which demands a certain realism, and removed the action safely behind the proscenium arch. The shadow of the film lies heavy too: director Maria Friedman (best known as a superb singer of West End musicals) has set the action in 1958, a bit too close to the film’s date for comfort, and no one in the enthusiastic cast has charisma to come close to Bing Crosby or Frank Sinatra. Worse, the exquisite delicacy of that perfect romantic song True Love is turned into something of pure schmaltz.

But then the party starts. Jazz musician Joe Stilgoe (son of Richard), inhabiting the Louis-Armstrong-esque entertainer role of the film, had given us a glimpse of his talents in the opening five minutes but, in the second half, he and band leader Theo Jamieson deliver such a breathtaking piano duet that it feels lias if the champagne hasn’t just gone to the heads of the wedding guests (shimmying wildly in their New Look silks) but the audience’s too. I won’t give away the coup of Tom Pye’s clever stage design, but suffice it to say we also get some exemplary tap dancing on top of a grand piano.

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After that, it is also as if Fleetwood, far better at being a comedian than “the fair Miss Frigidaire”, has downed a couple herself, and developed a dollop of endearing, hedonistic personality in the process. The men around her liven up too and, with top marks as well going to choreographer Nathan M Wright and the exemplary band, the show finds its heart and proves charming. It transpires, unsurprisingly, that Friedman knows a thing or two about delivering barn-storming song-and-dance after all.