My Fair Lady @ Bass Performance Hall
Photos by Jeremy Daniel
—Review by Jan Farrington
A few quibbles aside, it’s a pure pleasure to hear the music of My Fair Lady—certainly one of the golden-est of our Golden Age American musicals—come alive in the touring production playing at Bass Performance Hall this week. In Lincoln Center Theater’s lookin’ good revival, directed by Bartlett Sher, Lerner and Loewe’s music still amazes, one great song following another, each pushing George Bernard Shaw’s witty, class-tweaking story along—and re-incorporating a plot point that takes us back to his original 1913 play Pygmalion.
Most of us remember how the story starts: Cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle (Madeline Powell) has a chance encounter with Professor Henry Higgins (Jonathan Grunert), who studies language and how it’s spoken. He boasts to his new friend Pickering (John Adkison) that he could, in a few months, teach Eliza how to speak like an upper-crust lady—and change her life.
It’s one of those Moments. Left to think about Higgin’s idea, Eliza—hungry and cold, as always—begins to envision something different for herself. “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” she asks wistfully, if she had “a room somewhere,” a comfy chair, and enough heat to warm her face, hands, and feet all at once. Maybe someone “warm and tender” too.
So…smart, strong Eliza goes for it.
Having overheard the professor give a taxi driver his London address, Eliza turns up at the door, asking him for lessons in proper English. Higgins and Pickering make a bet—that he can teach Eliza enough to pass for a posh lady at a fancy ball in a few months. Eliza’s dream is to get a better job, as a lady in a flower shop.
How Eliza’s little dream becomes a bigger reality—well, that’s the rest of the story, sprinkled with lively character turns from Eliza’s poor-but-cheeky father Alfred (Michael Hegarty), Higgins’ elegant, wise-to-him mother (Becky Saunders), and a chorus of servants (with Madeline Brennan as put-upon housekeeper Mrs. Pearce) who are solidly on the side of management (“poor Professor Higgins”) and not Eliza. And then there’s Freddy (Cameron Loyal), a sweet and friendly upper-class dude who falls hard for Eliza’s amusing “small talk.”
Michael Yeargan’s handsome set designs slide in, out, and forward, sending us from deep-columned Covent Garden market to clean, lamp-lit Wimpole Street—and inside Higgin’s glorious wood-paneled library, with a tall arched window and a curving stairway leading to the upper-level books. Catherine Zuber’s costumes are varied and fine (from Higgins shabby tan coat to Eliza’s ruby-red cape)—with a particular nod to the silvery grays and pastels worn by the crowd at the Ascot races, who look like a cluster of posh pigeons.
The well-remembered “bits” of the musical still delight—the “Rain in Spain” sequence with its Spanish-tinged flamenco moment; the poker-faced, unmoving watchers at the horse race (shocked by Eliza’s fan-girl shrieking). Director Bartlett Sher has fiddled with the “Get Me To the Church on Time” sequence: Hegarty (as Doolittle) and his buddies bring off the song nicely, but it expands into a frolic that feels more like Paris than working-class London (can-can dancers, really?).
Madeline Powell as Eliza (she’s from Lubbock, btw) has a lovely voice and range: she hits the high note at the end of “I Could Have Danced All Night” without a smidge of trouble. She perhaps mugs a bit too much as the Cockney Eliza—but it’s hard to draw that line, and Powell becomes more and more impressive as she gains confidence and power. Higgins is left looking stunned by Eliza’s “Without You”—her declaration of independence.
Jonathan Grunert, an SMU alum, doesn’t “talk” Higgins’ songs; he sings them—a first for anyone raised on Rex (Harrison, that is). No objection, yet I found myself feeling his tuneful delivery somehow took the sharp edges off this quirky character. He is, however, quite clueless and funny in his rant about women “I’m an Ordinary Man”—and his screeched “Mother!” after Eliza says she’s through with him tells us a lot.
I mentioned quibbles: The body microphones (or the sound transmission thereof) sound tinny at times, especially noticeable in scenes where dialogue is spoken rapidly at high volume. The “My Fair Lady Orchestra” conducted by music director David Andrews Rogers provides expert accompaniment, but seemed to be rushing the tempi here and there, lending a “perfunctory” air to some of the song presentations (let’s get done here, people).
But all in all, this is a fine and fancy revival of a musical-comedy masterpiece, tinkered with just enough (a scene here, a line there) to give the script back a bit more feminist edge. Shaw, always an agitator for social progress, would undoubtedly approve.
Eliza? You go, girl.
WHEN: Through December 4
WHERE: Bass Performance Hall (Performing Arts Fort Worth)
WEB: basshall.com
