I could have yawned all night… My Fair Lady reviewed by Christopher Walker
It’s always hard when a hit movie has burned itself into an audience’s mind, writes Christopher Walker.
Will anyone ever equal Liza Minnelli in Cabaret? Can the outstanding elegance of George Cukor’s My Fair Lady ever be recaptured?
Judging by the Coliseum’s production of My Fair Lady, the answer is definitely “no.”
But at least Amara Okereke brings a new twist to the lead role, and a very strong score overcomes a lop-sided production.
The musical is one of Lerner and Lowe’s greatest scores, bizarrely based on Bernard Shaw’s hit play Pygmalion.
Shaw’s concept was taken from the ancient Roman poet Ovid. Ovid’s Pygmalion was a Cypriot sculptor who disdained real women and instead carved his perfect girl out of ivory, who he promptly fell in love with.
Objectification taken to extremes. When the statue came to life, they married, had a child named Paphos, and lived happily ever after.
Shaw was having none of that. He was more interested in class mobility and female emancipation.
He’d probably like the same elements in this very contemporary production. Terrified of dumbing down and happy endings, he forbade a musical while alive.
But Shaw’s piece has all the essential elements of the original. Eliza Doolittle, a cockney flower girl, is picked up from the Covent Garden gutter by Henry Higgins.
He is a professor of phonetics, a misogynist, and a terrible snob, and he takes on the challenge of teaching Eliza to speak properly so that she may pass as a Duchess at an embassy ball.
As such, the work contains several troubling elements for today’s woke world, elements this production seeks to smooth over.
It’s wonderful to see a black Eliza, and Amara Okereke brings a lot of enthusiasm and energy to the role. Harry Hadden-Patton (well-known to fans of The Crown and Downton Abbey) is perfectly cast as the aristocratic Higgins, and possibly more believable than Rex Harrison in the movie.
Dear Dame Vanessa Redgrave, now entering her late eighties, has a glorious cameo role as Professor Higgins’s mother, and pulls off walking with a crutch in the Ascot scene well.
The two somewhat stereotyped characters, the old India hand Colonel Pickering and Higgins’s housekeeper Mrs Pearce, are in safe hands with Malcolm Sinclair and
Maureen Beattie.
Otherwise, there are a lot of brave choices in this production with mixed results.
Stand-up comedian Stephen K Amos, cut his teeth as the compere of the Big Fish comedy clubs in South London. Since then he has been carving out an acting career, and here appears as Eliza’s father Alfred P Doolittle.
The director carefully walks him through the dancing and the delivery of the hit “I’m getting married in the morning,” accompanied by cross-dressing dancers.
The enormous stage at the Coliseum is always a challenge for intimate scenes, and set designer Michael Yeargen has chosen to spend a clearly limited budget portraying Professor Higgins’ house in Wimpole Street. It revolves so that we, unnecessarily, see four different rooms in the house.
By contrast, the two really big scenes – Ascot’s opening day, and the Embassy Ball, are distinctly underwhelming. Donald Holder’s lighting does all the work. A somewhat bizarre choice.
Likewise, there are some excellent moments from Catherine Zuber’s costumes. Eliza looks the part at Ascot. But not all the racegoers do.
We are a long way from the iconic scene Cecil Beaton crafted in the movie.
The Embassy Ball feels like Come Dancing on a bad night. Some in the audience might feel short changed, especially with a top price of £150 a seat.
Thank God for a strong score.
For tickets, go to https://www.eno.org/whats-on/my-fair-lady
Pictured: The company of My Fair Lady; Jordan Crouch, Tom Ping, Joseph Claus, and Tom Liggins with Amara Okereke as Eliza Doolittle. Credit: Marc Brenner;
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