ATC's latest production finishes year on upbeat note

High Society actors Angela Shirley (left) and Helen Medlyn. Picture / Carolyn Robertson

Let's be frank. One suspects a budding Hollywood starlet (or stud) keen to advance their career by hitting the casting couch would not do so with a scriptwriter.

Writers simply don't enjoy the profile or the power of directors or producers.

Yet, in publicity for its season finale, the Auckland Theatre Company highlights Carolyn Burns who adapted the script for its version of the musical High Society.

ATC describes the show as "a giddy blend of toe-tapping songs, fizzing one-liners and champagne-fuelled comedy" set to the music of Cole Porter's great songs including Swell Party, Let's Do It, I've Got You Under My Skin, True Love and Who Wants to be a Millionaire.

Based on the romantic comedy film The Philadelphia Story, High Society is the story of the well-heeled Lord family whose glamorous daughter is set to re-marry after a tempestuous first marriage to a cad who refuses to disappear quietly.

So why the prominent reference to Australia-based Carolyn Burns? It could be that ATC is paying homage to one of our own, as Burns is a New Zealander.

Born in Dunedin, raised in central Otago and formerly a TVNZ journalist, she started scriptwriting in the late 1970s. Her first work, Objection Overruled, was a critically acclaimed attention-getter set in the Family Court.

She left New Zealand in 1984 with husband Simon Phillips (now artistic director of the Melbourne Theatre Company), attended the Australian Film, Television and Radio School in Sydney and wound up writing for television.

In the early 1990s, Phillips asked if she would be interested in working with him on a special project. He wanted to revive High Society, one of Hollywood's best-loved musicals which starred Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra and Louis Armstrong.

The 1956 film script had been adapted for stage but Phillips, says Burns, felt it could be improved.

She was hesitant, fearing there would be whispers of nepotism. However, Phillips talked her round and she was soon immersed in the musical and its precursor, The Philadelphia Story which starred Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn and James Stewart.

Burns travelled to New York, carrying out extensive research on Cole Porter's music to add more of it to her version.

"You need to take the emotional heart of a piece and stay true to that, to let the characters infuse themselves in your brain and write dialogue you think they are thinking in a way that will work on stage.

"I wanted to create a show that people would come out of singing and feeling they had seen the same songs in the film High Society. Anything I added or altered had to fit in effortlessly."

Seven months later, Burns sent her version to the various authorities and holders of rights to Phillip Barry's script. They included Katharine Hepburn.

It was, says Burns, almost surreal to be waiting for a screen legend such as Hepburn to approve the changes she made to the script. Permission was granted in 1992; two years later her version of High Society successfully toured Australia and Britain.

Director Raymond Hawthorne describes Burns' adaptation as marrying the best comedy of The Philadelphia Story with the sweet nostalgia of the 1950s musical.

"We have been given a package, in the form of this wonderful script, that is well-honed," Hawthorne says. "We had to think about the era we were going to set it in but decided on the 1950s because it was so glamorous."

A friend of Phillips and Burns, Hawthorne feels a sense of responsibility to get it right for them as much as the audience and, of course, ATC.

He carried out one of the most extensive audition processes of his lengthy career to find his leading lady, requiring hopefuls to read seven or eight scenes with other cast members and sing and dance.

"I thought back on the most successful shows I had been involved in and what made them work so well. I realised it was the chemistry between the cast and that's what I wanted for this."

Angela Shirley, a former drama student of Hawthorne's, won the part of Tracy Lord but Hawthorne felt compelled to write to the other hopefuls thanking them for their time.

He describes the cast and crew as "a dream team". It includes Mike Edward, Latham Gaines, Mark Hadlow, Helen Medlyn, Roy Snow, Vicky Haughton, Emmeline Hawthorne and David Aston.

"I think it's a superb show to finish the year on because it is a marvellous festive piece," says Hawthorne.

"It is glamorous and fun and just great for getting into a celebratory mood. In fact, I think it's got more champagne in it than any other show I've been involved in."

Burns hopes to see the Auckland production. It will be an experience she thought she had farewelled when an American consortium bought the rights to High Society, supposedly in perpetuity.

"We lost them but things did not work out with the buyers so I was delighted and very surprised we got them back."

It will also be a break from her latest project, a black comedy about a family in America's Midwest whose patriotism is tested by their son's experiences in the Iraq war.

* High Society is at SkyCity Theatre, Nov 19-Dec 17