Higgins is a fair cop for Dominic
BY GEORGE he’s got it! Award- winning actor Dominic West is going from cop to crooner to play irascible Professor henry higgins in a new production of My Fair Lady.
The actor, who won acclaim for his gritty portrait of complex Baltimore detective Jimmy McNulty in The Wire TV series, will take on the part that won Rex harrison an Oscar (opposite Audrey hepburn) and a Tony (with Julie Andrews).
West will play the professor of phonetics who picks up the ‘deliciously low’ Covent Garden flower- girl Eliza Doolittle, betting that he can pass her off as an aristocratic lady by reforming her vowels and clipping her consonants.
The subject of higgins’ ‘experiment’ will be played by endearing young actress Carly Bawden, a self-described ‘farm girl’ from Somerset.
The show, running at Sheffield’s Crucible Theatre from December 12 until January 26, will mark the first time West has performed on the musical stage.
To ensure that everything remains mainly on the plain in Spain — sorry, Sheffield — West will be helped by Daniel Evans, Sheffield’s artistic chief, who will direct the show. Evans has two Olivier awards on his CV for performances in musicals: Merrily We Roll Along and Sunday In The Park With George.
‘higgins was made for him,’ Evans said of West’s casting. ‘Dominic has the temperament for it, and he has the class,’ he said, alluding to West’s Old Etonian background.
he noted the professor’s child-like quality, and the fact that he has a bit of a temper — not, he added quickly, that West has a short fuse, ‘ but he can certainly act it’.
West won a Bafta best actor award for his portrayal of killer Fred West in ITV1’s Appropriate Adult and received acclaim for his stage work — but has never sung on stage.
Evans pointed out that the part was written for an actor- singer rather than a singer who can act. ‘It’s written to be spoken, and Dominic’s an amazing actor. he’ll be thorough, he’ll be playful and he’ll sing as much as he wants to sing and we’ll discover what we need in rehearsals.’
The director was pleased that both leads are close to the age of the parts as originally written in the show’s source play, George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. higgins is supposed to be 40, Eliza 19 or 20. West is 42, and Bawden 23.
EVANS knew Bawden would be ‘ loverly’ as Eliza as soon as she’d finished singing I Could have Danced All Night and Show Me at her first audition. ‘She blew everyone else out of the water,’ he told me, adding that she’s a Broadway- type ingenue in the sense that she can belt it out and she’s able to reach the top soprano notes as well.
The actress knows the Alan Jay Lerner-frederick Loewe words and music well, and has seen Audrey hep burn in the film, but she’s not going to replicate what hep burn does on screen. ‘You always want to honour what has come before you, but at the same time you’ve just got to go for it,’ she told me.
It’s a breakthrough role for her, although she had a key role in the West End in the charming but short-lived Umbrellas Of Cherbourg, and she’s currently in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe in Kensington Gardens, London.
Rehearsals start in November, but Bawden will have some dialect coaching before then. She has Received Pronunciation down pat, thanks to her training at the Guildford School of Acting. But she wants to perfect her Cockney, so she can spout ‘The rine in spine sties minely in the pline’ in a way that will make Prof higgins wince.
For now, Evans is concentrating on getting the show right for Sheffield. But with an actor of West’s calibre involved — and the enchanting potential of Bawden — there’ll be pressure to transfer it to London.
‘The pressure isn’t helpful,’ Evans sighed. ‘Our first aim is Sheffield.’