Occasionally a production comes along that reminds you just how wonderful musical theatre can be. Such is this gorgeous My Fair Lady that delights on so many levels, sweeping the audience along with, yes, exquisite costumes, glorious songs, humour, poignancy and show-stopping song and dance routines. However, what makes this a special show is that the cast members can sing which may sound like an odd comment but having sat through so many shows of vocal mediocrity, this is a joy to the ear.
Packed with evergreen musical numbers, With a Little Bit of Luck, The Rain in Spain, Wouldn’t It be Loverly?, I Could Have Danced All Night, On the Street Where You Live, I’m Getting Married in the Morning, how could this show fail to please? But it did not just please, it excelled with an exuberant, energetic cast of principals and ensemble members.
The flow of the work was enabled by Michael Yeargan’s characteristically visually and theatrically appealing and effective rotating set. Opera lovers amongst the audience may well remember Yeargan’s work with Welsh National Opera from its 1980s glory days on such productions as La Boheme, Eugene Onegin through to more recent revivals of his 1996 designs for Cavalleria rusticana, for example.
Michael D. Xavier
Charlotte Kennedy
Lesley Garrett
John Middleton and Michael D. Xavier
Directed by Bartlett Sher for New York’s Lincoln Centre in 2018 and revived by English National Opera (which has shamefully just lost its English Arts Council funding), this take on the Lerner and Loewe musical which has its origin in Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, achieves a focus on the social ills, challenges and hypocrisies of the time of the work’s setting, and not just the treatment of women which is the most obvious, yet casts a light on contemporary society without the need of clumsy and distracting transposition. Yes, much has changed but without using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, the production tells us all is still not right in the world.
Whether all the women in the musical should be quite as “right on” as presented in this staging is genuine to the original story is also debatable. The splendid Lesley Garrett as Mrs Pearce is not alone in her concern for the young Eliza as Higgins’ mother, sympathetically taken by Heather Jackson, manages to be both snob, feminist and humanitarian all wrapped up together.
Not so lucky is poor old Freddy Eynsford-Hill, beautifully sung by the young Tom Liggins, who always gets short shrift as a wet, useless suitor (and a fellow reviewer’s daughter reminded me how he would now be regarded as a stalker, which I guess would make Higgins a groomer). Liggins is a lovable puppy who Eliza is mad not to sweep off his feet, although she does try to get him to “pounce”.
Whether it is due to the strength of his performance or the direction, or both, but the stand-out character is Michael D. Xavier’s Higgins, the rather obnoxious professor who uses Eliza Doolittle as the guinea pig for his experiment and bet with the slightly more likeable Colonel Pickering, ably taken by John Middleton who brings some novelty to the rather caricature role. I can’t remember whether it is standard to joke at cross-dressing in Eliza’s gowns but that may be my poor memory. Xavier dominates every scene he is in with very physical, energetic movement, acting that skims just the right side of overdone, and is genuinely funny as well as ridiculously obnoxious. While his transformation that is seemingly supposed to mirror Eliza’s is unconvincing that is a plot rather than acting problem. Xavier sings a fine I’ve Grown Accustomed to her Face but it is still a weird song.
Adam Woodyatt
Tom Liggins
Michael D. Xavier, Heather Jackson and Charlotte Kennedy
Another stand out performance, and quite a surprise for me, was Adam Woodyatt of EastEnders fame, as Eliza’s father Alfred. Far too often “TV names” are put in shows presumably to help get bums on seats, but Woodyatt was excellent in the role, and he triumphed at the centre of the effervescent explosion of a song and dance routine for I’m Getting Married in the Morning.
As My Fair Lady, Charlotte Kennedy has one heck of a role to fill, and she does it with aplomb. She has a strong singing voice, dramatic skill to bring conviction to the transformation from cockney flower girl to the belle of the ball, and of course looks stunning. It should not go without mention that the costumes from Catherine Zuber are to die for. In the latter scenes when she confronts Higgins she has gravitas and poise, but she also shows us this is an ambitious and sassy woman from the start, aware of the perils facing women, social divisions, societal hypocrisy, even if she may not know all the big words for it. Just as effective as her confrontation with her Svengali, her silence says more than words in the post-ball celebrations song You Did It when the men (and household staff) celebrate themselves for Eliza’s achievement.
It is not all an anti-male, anti-Higgins diatribe. He does acknowledge Eliza’s prodigious ability to learn, his farcical songs about men generally and his own shortcomings aren’t just silly songs, and his treatment by his mother and his slightly odd relationship with Pickering, all raise questions about a more nuanced character than some portrayals may allow for. It is also worth remembering Eliza is always there voluntarily and is to fulfil her own ambition to advance herself..
The ending is less oblique than in the famous 1964 Oscar winning film, but that is for audiences to discover and to put their own interpretation on not only Eliza and Higgins’ relationship but the fate of the “new woman” or at least the woman with a new voice and clothes.
It would be disgraceful not to also praise the orchestra under musical director Alex Parker brings to life the delicious score.
Is it cutting-edge, radical drama, an edgy ideological transaction and intervention that shakes the foundations of cultural hegemony? No, thank goodness. It is a professional, entertaining and thoroughly enjoyable evening of musical theatre.
In the eternal words of Elize Doolitltle Move yer blooming arse and get a ticket. Or something like that.
Wales Millennium Centre until November 26
https://www.wmc.org.uk/en/whats-on/2022/my-fair-lady
Video trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eI68gdzr1s
Images: Marc Brenner