OH, for the balmy nights of Oyster Bay. More champagne needed, methinks.

As a critique of the idle rich, High Society is fairly threadbare, but it dazzles with famous Cole Porter numbers.

We meet a minted socialite on the eve of her wedding. The only trouble is, the last husband hasn’t really gone away and he has quit the drink.

The story, made famous as a film starring Grace Kelly and Bing Crosby, is a romantic fantasy of second chances.

Michael Praed (a generation swoons) is a dashing hero Dexter, with the charm and a voice to match.

The chemistry between him and Sophie Bould, his slightly coquettish Trustafarian Tracy Lord, is beautiful (much more ravishing than Bould’s hair, which has more than a hint of dragged through a hedge backwards about it).

The set is darling, with a giddying revolve and a succession of slick, subtle changes handled ably by the chorus of smart servants. All credit to set and costume designer Francis O’Connor for having a vision that screams, politely, megabucks.

Music and Lyrics is still a baby of a company and the slick production values did not always translate, for me, into the staging, with a lot of scenes delivered in profile and the band tucked away in the pit.

For Did You Evah?, we were rudely transported to one of those loud tap shows where they use bin lids as instruments.

Polite Long Island 1930s society would have shuddered.

But we, like the rest of the audience (who almost offered an ovation at the polite voiceover pleading people to dispense with noisy snack wrappers before the show) fell in love with love, those charming Cole Porter lyrics and vicariously relived those long-dead days of carefree buck-throwing.

  • Until Saturday. Box office 08448- 112121 and at theatreroyal.co.uk

 

Sarah Scott