THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
THE TRANSATLANTIC MAGAZINE
It’s rather fitting that this acclaimed transfer from Broadway has arrived at London’s 'other' main opera house rather than a regular West End theater, for it has all the stateliness of a traditional grand opera production. And indeed, its director Bartlett Sher has a distinguished history at the Met. London audiences already loved the transfers of his The King and I and South Pacific.
A most familiar of musicals, like Oliver!, it gets a London grand outing at least once a decade. For a new audience (and yes, there are people in the world who haven’t seen the movie) this is a great introduction to the piece and directorial self-indulgence is held in check here. I await some young Turk director’s post structuralist dissection of it where Eliza has an eating disorder and Higgins gets canceled. The story of the arrogant Professor of Phonetics who takes on a Covent Garden flower girl as an experiment and trains her to “speak proper” so that she can pass as a duchess is ‘problematic’ on so many levels, as they say these days, but who cares, just listen to those tunes.
One of the few quibbles I’d have with this production is that, at least on opening night, the orchestra was too quiet, and the arrangements lacked a certain articulation at times so some of the key songs such as ‘Wouldn’t It Be Loverly’ lost impact. The thing with these songs is that there isn’t a weak one among them.
For a big old-fashioned production, you need experienced leads who can carry it and here, while they’re not stars, they soon will be. English actor Harry Hadden-Paten was Tony nominated for his Professor Higgins and is the only one to transfer from the Lincoln Center original. He’s an utter delight. He gets the awful, arrogant, self-absorption right but his Higgins has enough charm to get past it. Blessed with a great voice, he makes us forget Rex Harrison and his sprechgesang. His lankiness is also put to great use in some choice moments of physical comedy.
Amara Okereke moves up to the A-list here and with her big voice gives Eliza a spiky energy which fits perfectly with the character’s street origins. Malcolm Sinclair, who always has impeccable comic timing, adds a patina of camp to Colonel Pickering, which again improves on that fusty denizen of the Gentlemen’s Clubs. Maureen Beattie supplies strong support too as a formidable, and Scottish, Mrs Pierce.
The surprise is in the star casting of Mrs Higgins. The late Diana Rigg did it on Broadway and here another Dame takes center stage – Vanessa Redgrave. It is amazing to consider that her last Lerner & Loewe outing was starring in the lavish film of Camelot in 1967. It’s great to witness the energy and gumption she brings to the part of this proto-feminist. She is at times hobbled somewhat by an enormous hat which obscures her face at key moments.
That sin aside, Catherine Zuber’s Tony winning costumes are a triumph. Not easy to try and top Cecil Beaton but she does it. The exquisite Ascot Gavotte scene, for example, starts out in silhouette and gives us an Edwardian sartorial feast of pastel lilacs, all softly washed in Donald Holder’s pellucid, pink, lighting design. Production values throughout are lavish with Michael Yeargan’s sets combining hefty wooden recreations of Higgins’ Wimpole Street home, on a big revolve, with more mobile creations for the fluid scenes such as Alfred Doolittle’s raucous late night pub crawl through Covent Garden in 'Get Me to the Church on Time' (the "I’m getting married in the morning" number). Doolittle is played by the stand-up comedian Stephen K Amos who has the impish roguery spot-on but struggles a bit in the dance numbers when up against more polished West End dance veterans.
This is one to wallow in to escape our, many, troubles.
