How long did it take you to recognize the wordplay in the title of My Fair Lady? For decades I just accepted it was the line from the nursery rhyme about London Bridge falling down. It was only in the last 20 years or so that I realized the title of the play could also be a Cockney saying “Mayfair lady,” Mayfair being an exceedingly posh neighborhood of London.
The musical comedy in question, which opened in 1956 quickly became an American classic. The 2018 Lincoln Center Theater revival, which had its tour rudely interrupted a couple of years ago, is now at the Fox, three hours-plus of delightful escapism.
Our Eliza is Shereen Ahmed, selling nosegays of violets in front of the lovely Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. A man behind a post seems to be making notes about her and some of her – well, not quite the place to use the word peers, is it now? Her associates, let us say. He turns out to be a phonetician named Henry Higgins, played here by Laird Mackintosh. The rest, as they say, is history. Higgins attempts to turn Eliza into someone who could pass for a duchess.
It’s quite a household at 27A Wimpole Street. In addition to long-time bachelor Higgins, there’s his new friend, the linguist Colonel Pickering (Kevin Pariseau), the housekeeper Mrs. Pearce (Gayton Scott) and a flock of servants. Eliza, upon arriving, is so stunned, her raucous attitude mostly disappears.
Ahmed sounds fabulous and hits just the right spots as she becomes more and more duchess-ized, leading up to the Embassy Ball. Mackintosh’s Higgins, viewed in today’s terms, is well-acted and thus rather unlikeable, oblivious to his sexism, his frequently unkind, even abusive language and his ignoring of her humanity. Some day a slipper like the one used as a prop late in the second act, may come flying out of the audience at him.
Eliza’s father, Alfred P. Dolittle, comes to us courtesy of Martin Fisher. Fisher’s a bass, and the minute he opens his mouth for “With a Little Bit of Luck” it’s clear this is no ordinary Dolittle. He excels, too, with the physical comedy. “Get Me to the Church on Time” is turned into something that might have fit into The Rocky Horror Show, and I mean that with the greatest glee. (St. Louisans, take note: When this revival opened in 2018, our very own Norbert Leo Butz played Alf, to the puzzlement and delight of New York critics.)
There’s no doubt this is meant to be a blockbuster show. The set, for example, including a rotating two-level townhouse with two staircases, is amazing, despite a small glitch opening night in the Ascot scene. Even the backdrop looks like an early Monet painting. They’ve kept the superb original musical arrangements from Robert Russell Bennett and Phil Lang. The costume s, by Catherine Zuber, hit their apogee in the race scene, the pale, pale pearl gray very different than Cecil Beaton’s classic efforts onstage and in the film, but drawing the eye in to the many details.
This is clearly director Bartlett Sher’s vision of the classic musical, and the question of sexism obviously never left his mind as he put it together. The final scene is not in Higgins’ mother’s conservatory but afterwards. A new path is being trod for this version.
My Fair Lady
through April 3
The Fox Theatre
527 N. Grand
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