Mixed company

High Society is fun, but misses some steps

By Katherine Joyce

High Society plays at Portland Lyric Theatre, in South Portland, through May 12. Call (207) 799-1421.

COAL MINER’S PLODDER: Mariah Machado and Mark Dils in High Society.

For old theater or film buffs, High Society will bring back wonderful memories. This musical is based on the classic play The Philadelphia Story, which was later made into an equally classic movie of the same name starring Katharine Hepburn, Carey Grant, and Jimmy Stewart. As in the familiar story, young Tracy Lord, the icy eldest daughter of the wealthy and powerful Lord family, is about to embark on her second marriage (to a working-class coal miner turned nouveau riche) when things begin to go down the drain. Her ex-husband shows up unannounced and uninvited, a tabloid magazine is intending to expose her father’s affair with a dancer, and her ex-husband has arranged for the same magazine to cover her wedding in exchange for dropping the story on her father.

This is the quintessential musical comedy. It is light-hearted and fun, with a great Cole Porter score. The dramatic plot is developed by the male and female leads, and the secondary leads develop the comedy. The Lords’ serving staff function as the chorus, lending bodies to the dancing, voices to the singing, and an amusing commentary on the life led by their employers.

The Lyric Theater’s stage has been transformed into the elegant and expensive home of the Lords. Without extravagance, the set design conveys the opulence in which the family lives. Large double doors placed up center suggest both the interior and exterior of the house (the large serving staff rotate the set piece when switching the scene between in and out of doors). Large panels of white panes give the stage depth and a tidy sterility that compliments Tracy’s personality. Dropped behind the doors and panes is a large scrim, which changes color according to the lighting projected upon it.

Although the stage benefits from the clean look provided by the panes, they take up more than enough of its space, making group numbers a little bit crowded and chaotic looking. The choreography is fairly simple, and clearly geared towards the less skilled dancers in the group, but the dancers still struggle to form the clean lines and high-energy uniformity ideal in a chorus. The few numbers that are intended to show off the more talented dancers make poor use of both the space and the showcased skills. Those numbers seem to lack charisma, and feel generally un-climactic.

Unfortunately, the dancers aren’t complemented by the orchestra as they could be. Without trying to be too harsh, I’ll admit that the first notes played brought all of the middle and high school musicals of my youth rushing back to me. The full orchestra rarely plays together, leaning heavily on the piano as the primary accompaniment. And the pianist spends a lot of time plucking out notes for the singers, which results in off-tempo, awkward, and shockingly minimal musical accompaniment.

Although the note-plucking technique is commonly used in musical theatre to give the singers their notes in moment of weakness, its use in High Society does more harm than good. For those cast members who are talented singers, the plucking restricts their freedom to sing anything aside from the straight melody, and generally puts them off-tempo. For those who are not such great singers, the plucking just draws attention to those notes they miss, and the result in the tempo throws the singers off even more.

It should be noted, however, that the music is a little bit strange for a traditional musical. The numbers are Cole Porter songs, both those never published and old favorites reworked for the show. But most of the songs chosen aren’t exactly the toe-tapping exuberant numbers that you sing all the way home.

With a few exceptions, the leading cast have fair to good singing voices. Mariah Marchado (Tracy) struggles with the gap between her upper and lower ranges, and most of the numbers require her to bridge that gap. Nonetheless, she does a fine job. Notable exceptions are John York (Tracy’s Uncle Willie), Scott Moreau (tabloid reporter), and Kayla Roy (Dinah Lord). These three have outstanding voices, coupled with stage presence, and great timing. These three steal the show by being good at all three of the components necessary to good musical theater: singing, dancing, and acting.

The relationships between the characters are well written, but seem stilted in performance. Tracy and ex-husband C.K. Dexter Haven are written to have a volatile and passionate connection. On stage, they bicker, to be sure, but the passionate love affair underlying their quibbles is not evident from much other than the dialogue. Tracy’s relationship with her fiancé, George Kittredge, is also impersonal. It doesn’t help that Jacobs, playing Kittredge, has trouble coming off as the somewhat dull working class miner who suddenly lands in the middle of overwhelming opulence. Rather, he seems a little bit rich, a little bit spoiled, and a little bit of a dandy — not qualities one expects to find in the coal mines.

By contrast, York and Roy both have a fabulous knack for warming up a cool scene, and providing a great deal of comic relief to an awkward moment.

The plot is an old favorite and the songs are written by an old favorite. Although the cast have some trouble singing and dancing the night away, the show remains an enjoyable musical comedy.

Katherine Joyce can be reached at ingliskat@aol.com.