I walked into The Philadelphia Story with a real spring in my step. Admittedly, I’d never seen this play before, but how bad could it be given that the film — surely one of the two or three greatest romantic comedies ever to come out of Hollywood — was so closely based on Philip Barry’s 1939 hit? With Kevin Spacey in the Cary Grant role, Jennifer Ehle playing Tracy Lord and Broadway veteran Jerry Zaks at the helm, it couldn’t fail, could it?
Alas, what I’d expected to be a long, tall glass of vintage champagne turned out to be vin ordinaire. The play is much more of an ensemble piece than the film and requires a degree of integration among the cast that the performers in this production don’t come close to achieving. This may partly be because there are both British and American actors on stage and, stylistically, they are poles apart.
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