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MY FAIR LADY Tour Dates AMES, IA Feb 13 STEPHENS AUDITORIUM Read More
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It’s all in the language--
The importance of communication in general, and phonics in particular, is maybe no more highlighted than in the classic musical, My Fair Lady.
After a quarter-century away, the Lerner & Loewe version of this well-known story of “Cockney to Cultured” is enjoying a current revival, via the Lincoln Center Theater's production (they also brought back The King & I and South Pacific) and director Bartlett Sher’s vision.
We were fortunate enough to catch opening night of their six-night run at the beautiful Kauffman Center for the Arts in downtown Kansas City.
My Fair Lady is a musical based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story revolves around young Eliza Doolittle (played famously in previous incarnations by the likes of Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn) as a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from Professor Henry Higgins (perhaps actor Rex Harrison’s best-known role) a respected phonetician, so that she may pass as a cultured and proper lady. Despite his cynical disposition and difficulty relating to the opposite sex, Higgins finds himself attracted to her.
The musical's initial 1956 Broadway production won six Tony Awards, including Best Musical and set a record for the longest run of any musical on Broadway (2,717 performances!) up to that time. Many revivals followed, and the 1964 film won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
The themes of the source material haven’t exactly aged well, in our current post-”Me Too movement” culture, with characters maybe once charming and endearing, now thought of differently; but it should all be taken in historical context (like a period-piece novel, film, or painting), as a reflection of the particular times it was initially composed.
And besides, the true strength of this musical are the songs themselves, familiar to almost everyone - “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “The Rain in Spain,” “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” and “On the Street Where You Live” (and as evidenced by the humming and whistling of them we heard in the halls at intermission- at the restroom, water fountain, and cocktail bar lines).
The touring company for My Fair Lady has been on the road for some time, and is very schooled by this point, in presenting a flowing and professional staging. Sets were shifted in a lively manner, cues and prompts were hit, and the orchestra (mostly hidden in the front pit) was well-rehearsed and nicely mixed. A word of warning that the Cockney accents are strong and sometimes indecipherable (especially at the beginning), but as ears acclimate and the story continues, it becomes less of an issue.
Related, this version is a straight-ahead and traditional telling of the tale- no modernization, no American accents, or changes in setting, which preserves its source origins, but can also lack any potential surprises.
Lead Madeline Powell (as the scrappy young Doolittle) is on her first national tour and has found an ideal showcase for her vocal versatility, which stretches from a raspy Cockney drawl to operatic-height solo songs. Jonathan Grunert as Prof Higgins portrays an accurate blend of ego, steadfastness, reserve, and self-absorption and cohort John Adkison as wingman Col. Pickering displays similar, but with more lightheartedness and whimsy.
If you haven’t returned to the theater since our collective isolation years, perhaps the path back to again witnessing the unique language that can only happen on a live stage, is with a classic and traditional musical- familiar in its themes and songs, warm like a comfortable bowl of English stew. My Fair Lady is that musical.
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(My Fair Lady is playing at the Kauffman Center through Sunday, February 12)
(all photos courtesy of the official touring company website, click on any image to enlarge and see in full)
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| John C ♥ johnc@weheartmusic.com ♥ twitter.com |
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