My Fair Lady
Drury Lane Theatre 2002-2003

It would have been fun to pan this revival. After all the hype, and the well-publicised problems with their first leading lady (Martine McCutcheon, citing throat problems, missed almost half her performances before finally quitting, allowing producer Cameron Mackintosh to do what he should have done in the first place and hire an experienced musical star, Joanna Riding), my critic's perversity was sorely tempted.

But the fact is that it is really, really good. In fact it occurs to me that, with Kiss Me Kate, South Pacific, Chicago, Blood Brothers, Phantom and Les Mis, London audiences are being offered a remarkably high-quality crash course in some of the greatest musicals of the past 60 years. What a bounty!

Trevor Nunn's production (which began at the National Theatre) is rich and lavish to look at, deeply moving and entertaining as drama, and - now that they've got the casting right - a delight to hear.

It is almost axiomatic that actresses playing Eliza capture either the flower girl or the lady but not both, but Joanna Riding triumphs over that curse. Her street urchin is a sprightly and spunky gamin whose quick wit and sharp tongue you wouldn't want to be lashed by, and she artfully carries much of that same brightness into the transformed Eliza, preventing her from becoming merely a beautiful mannequin. She can be sharp, pensive or dramatically moving - I have never been so thrilled by the magical moment she gets "The Rain in Spain" right, or so touched when she is ignored after the triumphant ball.

She is also an excellent singing actress, giving delightfully new nuances to lyrics some of us have grown up with. And it goes without saying that Riding has the best voice on the London stage, so that when her big moment comes with "I Could Have Danced All Night," her pure tones and your heart both soar.

If Jonathan Pryce's Higgins is a bit too soft from the start for my taste, his characterisation still works, allowing us to see him falling for Eliza long before he realizes it. It may be curmudgeonly of me to miss Rex Harrison's cold egotistic blindness, and the crispness that gave to Higgins' misogynist lyrics, and I do think Harrison's characterisation made the climactic "Accustomed To Her Face" more dramatically satisfying. But, like Riding, Pryce constantly delights with original nuances and discoveries in the overfamiliar songs.

Anthony Ward's designs are appropriately beautiful, while Matthew Bourne's choreography, a bit generic in early numbers, finds its feet (as it were) in the witty Ascot scene, where hints of horsey movements colour the elegant posturing, and in the sumptuous grand ball.

There are some things to grumble about. Dennis Waterman is too stolid as Doolittle, robbing both his musical numbers and his straight scenes of comic energy. Stanley Holloway's charm 45 years ago may have been pure hokum, but it was engaging hokum, and his songs were constructed to exploit it. Now the chorus has to dance and sing around Waterman in a barely-successful attempt to supply what he lacks.

Caroline Blakiston is appropriately elegant as Mrs. Higgins, but Nicholas le Prevost, in the thankless role of Pickering, has been directed toward hints of camp that raise unwelcome questions about that confirmed old bachelor. Mark Umbers is totally invisible as Freddy and, in one of the evening's biggest disappointments, has been misdirected to reduce the lovely ballad "The Street Where You Live" into an unsuccessful attempt at comedy.

Minor cavils, all of them. My Fair Lady ranks unquestionably in the pantheon of the American musical theatre, and this new production does Lerner and Loewe's creation full justice.

Note: Joanna Riding does not perform Monday nights and Wednesday matinees, but the alternate Eliza, Alexandra Jay, with plenty of experience as McCutcheon's understudy, has gotten excellent reviews. Forty-five years ago Julie Andrews managed to sing eight performances a week, and without the aid of microphones.

Gerald Berkowitz

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Review - My Fair Lady - Drury Lane 2002