High Society – The Mill at Sonning

Picture: Andreas Lambis

High Society continues at the Mill at Sonning until 20 January 2023.

Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

After Top Hat for the last two festive seasons and a fantastic Gypsy last summer, the Mill at Sonning is treating us to a first-rate production of Cole Porter’s High Society, easily the finest since the Regent’s Park Open Air’s back in 2003. Based on the 1956 MGM movie starring Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, the first stage musical version of High Society, which opened on Broadway in 1998 and which starred a very young Melissa Errico, had, like its Hollywood model, almost no dancing at all.

Thanks to the dazzling work of Jaye Elster, assisted by George Lyons, it’s great to see a lot of choreography featured in this production, performed brilliantly by the excellent cast. The book by Arthur Kopit, who also wrote Nine and Phantom for Maury Yeston, is actually based more on the play The Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn than on the MGM film. 

It really comes together in the second half with the burlesque of the wedding reception and the satire of the competing suitors for Tracy Lord, class differences being subtly shown with a light touch. The ending with the couples reconciled reminded me of the closing of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A plus for the stage musical is the abundance of Porter classics such as ‘Ridin’ High’, ‘She’s Got that Thing’, ‘Just One of Those Things’, and ‘Let’s Misbehave’, cleverly inserted into the narrative on top of the few the songwriter wrote for the movie, his next to last score for Hollywood. 

‘True Love’, the hit song from the movie which Porter hated, is given a more sensual treatment as the Act I closer. And ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ has been developed into a show-stopping duet for the limber Laura Tyrer as Liz Imbrie and the magnetic Matthew Jeans as Mike Connor, both tabloid reporters. The latter also gets to deliver a heartfelt ‘You’re Sensational’, the most haunting ballad Porter penned. 

As for the Sinatra/Crosby famous and funny duet ‘Well, Did You Evah!’, Jeans also does it full justice with the equally excellent Matt Blaker (playing Dexter Haven), who also gets to croon the moving ‘Samantha’ before the finale. Kurt Kansley is a perfect Uncle Willie, but the evening belongs to the vivacious Victoria Serra as Tracy, equally believable wearing a mask to save her skin at the beginning, then letting go completely in Act II, when she delivers a climatic ‘It’s All Right With Me’. 

The costumes by Natalie Titchener, lighting design by Mic Farman and Hector Murray, as well as the magnificent sets by Jason Denvir all add up to a highly polished West End calibre production. Director Joseph Pitcher ensure it is a piece that fizzes. While as light as a glass of champagne, it still reveals, when digging a little deeper, a story of class and how our world view is shaped by the society into which we are born. It’s also a story about the conflict between the persona we are expected to present to the world and our authentic selves. 

Thanks Joseph Pitcher for a first-rate production of a still maturing classic not to be missed at any cost at the magical Mill at Sonning until January. 

Patrick Honoré