Review: My Fair Lady, The Questors Theatre
Loverly revival of the classic musicalSummary
Rating
Excellent
The 1964 film adaptation of Lerner and Loweās My Fair Lady is surely the definitive version of one of the all-time greatest musicals. With a dozen witty and wonderful songs augmenting a script closely based on George Bernard Shawās superlative comedy of manners and morals, Pygmalion, the film also boasts career-best performances from Rex Harrison as bull-in-a-flower-shop linguistics professor Henry Higgins, and Audrey Hepburn embodying the pinnacle of female beauty as Eliza Doolittle, the aspirant commoner Higgins transforms through his dark arts of language. All subsequent productions inevitably invite comparison.
It’s a pleasure to report that this production at Ealingās Questors Theatre absolutely holds its own next to its illustrious forebear. The songs, the laughs, the romance, the light touch upon serious social themes⦠all are wonderfully present and correct.
Need a plot recap? Tunnel-visioned Professor Higgins bets fellow toff Colonel Pickering that he can elevate āsquashed cabbage leafā Eliza from her lowly status as a Covent Garden flower girl by transforming her voice from a cockney squawk to a genteel lilt which could pass as that of a duchess.
My Fair Lady is basically Pygmalion with some of the denser speeches trimmed and some cracking songs added to give the theme of class mobility a delightful musical bounce. āWouldnāt It Be Loverly?ā enchants with its dream of simple pleasures, āI Could Have Danced All Nightā soars romantically, and āAscot Opening Dayā accompanies the well-to-do to the races in style ā matched by designer Carla Evansā exquisite costumes.
Higgins (Ant Foran) gets a clutch of brilliantly grumpy rants set to music, irritably asking āWhy Canāt the English Teach Their Children How To Speak?āand āWhy Canāt a Woman Be More Like a Man?ā Elizaās dad, philosophical dustman Alfred Doolittle, has cheery working-class anthems āWith a Little Bit of Luckā and āIām Getting Married in the Morningā.
In the latter role, Robert Vass has enormous fun ducking responsibility with a wise-sounding excuse for every dodgy ruse, while as Elizaās smitten suitor, Luke Baverstock plays Freddy Eynsford-Hill as more than just a gurning fop, and gives an endearingly passionate rendition of āOn the Street Where You Liveā.
The whole ensemble are admirably skilled, but in a very strong pack Kirsty Kingās Eliza is the undoubted ace. She masters the transition from flower girl to emergent social butterfly, bringing out unexpected and sophisticated nuances in familiar scenes such as Elizaās first introduction to society and her climactic showdown with Higgins. The only question raised by Kingās performance is: āAudrey who?ā
Directed and choreography by: Michelle Spencer
Musical director: Tom Arnold
My Fair Lady plays at The Questors Theatre until Saturday 5 April.