A sumptuous, showstopping and perfectly ‘loverly’ revival

My Fair Lady Lincoln Center Theater, New York

Lincoln Center Theater’s Broadway revival of My Fair Lady may be fiercely loyal to Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s 1956 musical, based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, but it bucks convention in two ways. Tradition has it that Eliza is played considerably younger than Henry Higgins, but here Lauren Ambrose, best known for TV’S Six Feet Under, is three years older than her British co-star, Downton’s Harry Hadden-paton, while director Bartlett Sher has slightly revised the ending.

Neither aspect matters a jot in Sher’s sumptuous production, in which Diana Rigg also pops up as Higgins’s exasperated mother. Sher excels at finding strong yet subtle resonance in classic musicals – his production of The King and I comes to the West End this summer – and it’s the class and gender divide between Higgins and Eliza, the flower girl he transforms into a society lady, that’s most significant. Suffragettes even show up at the end of a street scene to remind us of women’s limited options in 1912.

But what’s especially lovely (or should that be “loverly”?) is watching the tempestuous pair gradually fall in love. Ambrose brings a beautiful voice and a winning combination of humour, pluck and fragility to the role. Haddenpaton mitigates some of Higgins’s fury by yelling at Eliza in a tone that’s more playful than patriarchal. Although the character is a bundle of rage at times, it’s clear his feelings for Eliza run deep.

The production also looks and sounds great, from Catherine Zuber’s costumes and Michael Yeargan’s set, which recreates an Edwardian English townhouse and street, to the large orchestra, which makes numbers such as I Could Have Danced All Night soar. Rigg is all bejewelled grandeur, while Norbert Leo Butz is wonderful as Eliza’s blithely drunk father in the showstopping Get Me to the Church on Time, the high point of Christopher Gattelli’s lively choreography.

Lerner revised Shaw’s ending to have Eliza returning to Higgins. Sher too brings her back, but after she affectionately touches his cheek, she departs up an aisle. Do they stay friends but not become lovers? Do they become lovers but not stay together? The ambiguity is bitter-sweet.

Some might lionise or lambast this as the #Metoo movement’s My Fair Lady. But at the end of its three hours, it’s these magnificent characters, not political issues, that will be dancing in your head all night.

Booking until Jan 6, 2019. Tickets: myfairladybway.com