DIFFERENT CLASS
From the archive, 1956: Brooks Atkinson on the wonderful ‘My Fair Lady’ at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in New York
My Fair Lady is a wonderful show. Alan Jay Lerner has adapted it from Shaw’s Pygmalion, one of the most literate comedies in the language. Shaw’s crackling mind is still the genius of My Fair Lady. Mr Lerner has retained the same ironic point of view in his crisp adaptation. As Professor Higgins and Eliza Doolittle, Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews play the leading parts with the light, dry touch of top-flight Shavian acting.
My Fair Lady is staged dramatically on a civilized plane. Probably for the first time in history a typical musical comedy audience finds itself absorbed in the act of pronunciation and passionately involved in the proper speaking of “pain”, “rain” and “Spain”.
In his robust score, Mr Loewe has made the Covent Garden scenes more raffish and hilarious. Not being afraid of melody, he has written some entrancing love music, and a waltz; and he has added something to Professor Higgins’s characterisation in a pettish song entitled “A Hymn to Him”. All this is, no doubt, implicit in Pygmalion. But Mr Loewe has given it heartier exuberance.
Despite all the rag-tag and bobtail of a joyous musical show, Mr Hart and his associates have never lost their respect for a penetrating comedy situation. As Alfred P Doolittle, the plausible rogue, Stanley Holloway gives a breezy performance that is thoroughly enjoyable. But it is the acting of Miss Andrews and Mr Harrison in the central roles that makes My Fair Lady affecting as well as amusing. Miss Andrews does a magnificent job. The transformation from street-corner drab to lady is both touching and beautiful. Out of the muck of Covent Garden something glorious blossoms, and Miss Andrews acts her part triumphantly. Mr Harrison is perfect in the part – crisp, lean, complacent and condescending until at last a real flare of human emotion burns the egotism away and leaves us a bright young man in love with fair lady. It’s a wonderful show.
First appeared in ‘The New York Times’