My Fair Lady
Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe
Directed by Rachel Kavanaugh
Chichester Festival Theatre
Star rating: 5
Four things distinguish this outstanding production of a dear old favourite: Hadley Fraser’s Higgins, Stephen Mear’s choreography, Peter McKintosh’s designs and Cat Beveridge’s over-stage orchestra.
Fraser gives the misogynist, dictatorial Higgins a deliciously fresh twist. Much of the dialogue – and it’s a very wordy musical – is straight from the pages of Shaw’s Pygmalion (1912) and can be a bit laboured. Fraser squeezes every ounce of comedy from it with rapier-sharp timing and a strong dramatic rapport with his foil, Colonel Pickering (Tony Jayawardena – good). Fraser slides seamlessly into song, leaps energetically on and off furniture, and after his fine performance in Magic at Chichester earlier this year demonstrates again what a versatile and talented actor he is.
My Fair Lady calls for a big ensemble and gets it here. The visual shapes demanded by the choreography are slick, dramatic and energetic – using the whole of CFT’s big thrust playing space. The rhythmic bell mimes in “Get Me To The Church On Time” are genius, for example. So are the long cross-stage lines. Stephen Mear has excelled himself here.
Then there is the set – Higgins’s house on the revolve which also slides forward and back with other scenes set more simply. The retractable fences which connote “respectable” outdoors are ingenuous too. My Fair Lady costumes have to be spectacular and they are: gorgeous flamboyant pastels for the Ascot scene (immaculately sung and choreographed) and several stunning purple outfits for Keziah Ibe as Eliza, of whom more shortly.
Above the action sits the fourteen piece orchestra, mostly unseen but very much heard. Beveridge draws the very best from Frederick Loewe’s delightful orchestrations and it will be a long time before I forget the wonderful clarinet solo (Alice Eddie) as “With a little Bit of Luck” rachets up.
Also in the mix is Ibe’s sparky Eliza, the flower girl who is dragged from Covent Garden and taught how to speak “properly” so that she can be passed off as a lady and win a bet for Professor Higgins. Ibe is straight out of Arts Educational Schools and this, amazingly, is her professional debut. She has a theatrically mature aura, sings and acts with total conviction and often commands the stage. Expect to see more of her very soon.
At the other end of the spectrum Gary Milner brings years of experience to Alfred P Doolittle, the lazy hard drinking dustman, ultimately forced into respectability. What a joy to watch a company working so coherently when its members are at such different points in their careers. Milner moves like rubber and has a delightful, knowing way of catching eyes in the audience. And he can communicate a saucy thought with a mere twitch of his head. The whole of the “I’m Getting Married in the Morning” sequence is a theatrical tour de force.
Chichester has scored again, unlike England in the semi-final played against Argentina during the press night performance. (Much excited phone fumbling in the interval). Take your family. An eleven year old accompanied me as my plus one and she was hooked. It’s funny, occasionally rueful and contains some of the best music in musical theatre. What’s not to love?
Photography by Johan Persson
