Helen George has opened as Tracy Lord in High Society at the Barbican theatre in London, putting a new face on the Cole Porter musical as it begins a run that will carry on there until 11 July before touring until 14 November. The production arrives with the polish of a major West End-style revival and a cast built around George’s turn as the socialite at the centre of the story.
That is why attention is on George now: audiences looking for the Barbican staging of High Society will find her opposite Julian Ovenden as Dexter, Tracy Lord’s pining ex-husband, with David Seadon-Young as her fiance George, Freddie Fox as undercover journalist Mike, Felicity Kendal as Mother Lord, Nigel Lindsay as Uncle Willie and Carly Mercedes Dyer as photographer Liz. Rachel Kavanaugh directs, with Anthony Van Laast on choreography, and the production is being watched as it moves from London to the road.
The musical itself is a familiar piece of theatrical inheritance, drawn partly from the 1956 film and Philip Barry’s 1939 play The Philadelphia Story, and this version leans hard into that pedigree. The songs land with confidence — Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, True Love and Now You Have Jazz all feature, along with an extended Let’s Misbehave — and the vocals and staging are smooth enough to make the evening feel expensive and assured.
But the same polish can leave a mark. The book by Arthur Kopit remains rather wooden, and the production never quite finds the emotional centre that gave the 1956 film its weight. There is style here, and there is musical lift, yet the story’s sharper edges do not fully connect, even as the show keeps moving with the clean efficiency of a well-drilled revival.
That makes the London run more than a brief opening-night exercise. If High Society holds an audience at the Barbican, it will be because George and the ensemble can carry a show that is glossy in execution but less persuasive in feeling, and the answer to that question will start to come quickly as the production stays in place until 11 July and then heads out on tour through 14 November.
For anyone searching for Helen George now, this is the reason: she is fronting a production with real scale, real songs and a clear route beyond London, even if the lingering question is whether that route can preserve the spark the material still needs.
