This one was a no-brainer. When you announce that you're producing Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story, and you've got Julie Cotton in town, you've got the basis for a great show. Ms. Cotton, whose onstage persona is eerily similar to the beloved Katherine Hepburn, is a strong performer perfect for this clever comedy. However, what to do with the other characters whose movie performers are set in an audiences mind? How do you play C.K. Dexter Haven after Cary Grant has established the role, or compete with Jimmy Stewart's Mike Connor, or even Ruth Hussey's sharp-as-a-tack Liz Imbrie? The answer, as Director D. Scott Withers has decided, is let one person remind you of her predecessor, and let the rest bring their own to the show. The result is successful, even as some of the choices and performances are not up to the level of the two leads.

Tracy Lord is the eldest daughter of a Philadelphia Main Line family. She has the breeding and carriage of a Bryn Mawr girl, but the spirit of a coltish firebrand. Her family is readying for her second marriage to a political aspirant, George Kittridge, while her little sister Dinah and her ex-husband C. K. set their own plans in motion. When they are bribed by a tabloid to allow reporter Mike and photographer Liz to cover the proceedings in order to quash an article about their philandering patriarch, complications of a comedic kind ensue.

With a cast of ten for a dialogue driven three-act play, this is not the easiest show to block. To that end, Mr. Withers has done an excellent job of keeping the stage pictures interesting and the pacing brisk. Most everyone is able to deliver the biting screwball comedy dialogue speedily, and the air of the idle rich is well presented. Ms. Cotton lives up to the expectations of her casting. She is as sly, as sexy, as haughty as Ms Hepburn, and the audience has no choice but to fall madly in love with her. The real test, though, comes when Travis Mondesitt enters. Are we going to see the Peoria Cary Grant? No, but what he does instead is make C. K. his own; an effete, spry sailboat racer who has learned from his first bout of a marriage with Tracy. We instantly accept Mr. Mondesitt, which is a work of art on its own. So it is with several of the others, from Michael Arbuckle's more conflicted Mike to Marcus Smith's disingenuous George. Even Jack Fahey, who struggles with an awful line delivery as the precocious Uncle Willie, smarmily played by Roland Young in the movie, is inexplicably endearing despite his performance problems. Kudos also go to Katie Olsen, who does a hilariously dead-on job as Dinah, creating a younger version of Ms. Cotton's Tracy, to Michael Sallustio as Tracy and Dinah's older brother Sandy, and to Keith Wick, who is strong as their father Seth.

While I appreciate what Courtney Weir does with Liz, she is a little soft and hard to hear for the role of this brassy young lady. As for Julie Peterson's matriarch Margaret Lord, while some of the time, she is acceptable as the frazzled wife and mother, she is also guilty of odd line deliveries and plays her scene of tipsy flustered in a painfully embarrassing way.

Theater Works continues their design slide, though, even as they have raised the level of their performers and direction for this production. William H. Symington's set requires two box constructions, not an easy task, but looks incredibly cheap, from the doors that open to unmasked views of the backstage wall and performers and stage crew scurrying by, to the unpainted joints on the hinged flats that swing to move the action from the sitting room to the porch. Marginally better is Erik Michael's lighting, which at least covers the actors' playing spaces and rarely leaves them in darkness. Scott Campbell's sound design and Annette Crismon's costumes are solid.

This is a cute Valentine from Theater Works. It may be wrong to go to a show and compare it to the movie, but some plays cannot escape this scrutiny. Thankfully, Mr. Withers and his cast have found a way to create their own work of art, while still echoing the work's star-studded predecessor.