Caste Marks

By T.E. Kalem

THE PHILADELPHIA STORY by Philip Barry prettiest sight in this fine, pretty world is the privileged class enjoying its privileges" is a celebrated line from The Philadelphia Story. It has not been fluently translated to the stage at Lincoln Center, where the current revival reopens the Vivian Beaumont Theater. Elegancy is missing.

The set, designed by John Conklin, is a jungle of color, an obstacle course of clutter. The plethoric flowers do serve a purpose. Tracy Lord (Blythe Banner) is going to rewed one George Kittredge (Richard Council), an up-from-the-proles coal company manager. As everyone who has seen the matchless Katharine Hepburn-Cary Grant-James Stewart movie knows, the next 24 hours constitute a lifetime for Tracy. She takes a compromising midnight swim in the nude with Journalist Macaulay ("Mike") Connor (Edward Herrmann), sheds her fiance, and is reconciled to her ex-alcoholic, ex-husband C.K. Dexter Haven (Frank Converse).

Blythe Danner is an exquisitely accomplished actress, but she is not arrogant enough at the beginning to provide a contrast with her vulnerability at the end. As Tracy's precociously sophisticated preteen sister, Cynthia Nixon captures just the right air of artifice and gives the most assured performance of the evening.

The three men in Tracy's life fail to establish bold personality profiles. As Kittredge, Council provides more sullen bark than bite, Converse's Dexter Haven is more earnest than insouciant, and Herrmann must have studied Stewart at least as carefully as he did the script.

After 40 years, the play still provides a delightful evening because Barry could hone a comic line like a Sheffield blade. Director Ellis Rabb does full justice to that, but he scants the social subtext of what is, in some ways, a defense of snobbery. Without carrying Brechtian placards, the play says in a variety of ways: "Marry your own kind," "Wealth sanctifies," "Avoid lesser breeds (like maids and intrusive upstart journalists) who violate the elitist code of being 'yare.' " That is the saline substance beneath the sleek surface of The Philadelphia Story, and it is only fitfully evident in this production.

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