FAIR PLAY: THIS LADY IS BLOOMIN’ LOVERLY
You’ll dance all night after seeing Kennedy’s exquisite Eliza in Lerner and Loewe classic
‘Xavier’s Higgins is left open to any romantic advance Eliza might make’
‘Kennedy’s range copes exquisitely with the mood of Wouldn’t It Be Loverly’
My Fair Lady Bord Gáis Theatre To October 30 ★★★★★
Bernard Shaw hated the adaptation of his play Arms and The Man into the musical The Chocolate Soldier, so he was very touchy about attempts to have his other plays adapted. A few years after Shaw’s death, Alan Jay Lerner adapted Shaw’s own screenplay for Pygmalion into My Fair Lady, with music by Frederick Loewe. As a result, the musical has a great deal of Shaw’s own original sparkling dialogue, along with Lerner’s brilliant lyrics. The one big addition Lerner made was to tweak the ending to give a hint of romance between Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle.
Pygmalion was the legendary Greek sculptor who carved a statue of the perfect woman. It was the basis of Shaw’s idea for Eliza, the rough-spoken, uneducated, but sensitive, flower-seller to become a lady by learning how to express herself properly.
And Henry Higgins, professor of phonetics, is the means of making the transformation: not for love of Eliza, but for his own self-admiration, and to win a bet.
On the question of what comes first, the words or the music, Lerner was clear: ‘It’s the book
[the libretto] that decides whether a show will work: it’s the score that decides whether the show will last.’ In the language of musical theatre, the score includes the words and the music. With its superb combination of book, lyrics and music, My Fair Lady has unbeatable staying power.
And this touring Lincoln Center Theatre production pulls out all the stops, along with a sumptuous revolving set by Michael Yeargan that reproduces the Edwardian home of Henry Higgins and other locations in enormous detail and with seamless on-stage movement. The costumes, especially in the Ascot and embassy scenes, are particularly elegant, adding considerably to the graceful charm of the choreography and the overall effect.
Eliza is played by Charlotte Kennedy as a spicy, ambitious young woman conscious of her abilities and not overawed by the social status of Henry Higgins and his friend Colonel Pickering.
Kennedy’s singing range copes exquisitely with the charming hopeful mood of Wouldn’t It Be Loverly, the angry defiance of Just You Wait, the sheer joy of I Could Have Danced All Night and the frustrated annoyance of her Show Me outburst to her would-be suitor Freddie Eynsford-Hill.
Rex Harrison, in the film version and on stage, coped with Higgins’s songs by proclaiming the words rather than singing them. Michael D. Xavier’s Higgins sings the songs, which is less abrasive, but if anything, he’s a more totally self-obsessed academic, lacking in human sympathy and unable to see the strain he puts Eliza under by his dictatorial methods.
He doesn’t mellow as the show progresses and in the vital scene after the embassy ball, in which Eliza has triumphantly passed her test as a lady, he is positively boorish towards her, causing her to leave the house.
That episode casts doubt on any hope that Eliza might still have some romantic feelings for him.
However, Xavier turns the song I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face – often sung by Higgins expressing minimum regret, and annoyance with himself for his weakness – into an anguished act of self-discovery and repentance that finally seems to humanise him. Which leaves him open to any romantic advance Eliza might make on her return to the house.
But director Bartlett Sher leaves the audience with an intriguingly ambiguous ending, unclear, but in line with Shaw’s own feelings about the relationship.
Adam Wood plays Eliza’s feckless father Alfred Doolittle for all its worth, with the rousing With a Little Bit of Luck, and I’m Getting Married in The Morning in scenes that throw elegance to the winds and go for pure spectacle, raucous humour and a bout of vulgarity.