By BRUCE DENNILL
My Fair Lady / Directed by Steven Stead / Teatro, Montecasino, Fourways
One of the challenging aspects of reviving a hugely well-known piece is that the comparison of the new version to all the ones that have come before is inevitable. Theoretically, there is also the problem of familiarity breeding contempt if oft-repeated themes or tunes are not delivered in a way that makes them stand out in a fresh and enjoyable way.
This new collaborative production, presented by Pieter Toerien and Cape Town Opera and featuring performers from all over South Africa, tosses aside such concerns by being, bar one minor wiring issue during the performance under review, a pretty much flawless interpretation of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s enduring musical.
The performances across the board make the show memorable and consistently entertaining, with an ensemble containing both musical- and opera-trained singers giving the superb songs both punch and precision. There are a number of actors whose work deserves greater focus, though. In the relatively smaller role of Mrs Higgins, Adrienne Pearce is a biting combination of cynicism and warmth. As Mrs Pearce, Megan Spencer has an eye-twinklingly unflappable firmness mixed with empathy that keeps the arrogance and casual prejudice of Higgins and Pickering in check and ensures that Eliza Doolittle receives some genuine concern for her wellbeing. Mark Richardson puts in a showstopping, boisterous turn as Alfie Doolittle – cunning, self-serving, and undeniably charming. And Graham Hopkins has an almost gleefully good time as Colonel Pickering, thrilled by the Eliza-overhauling game he enters into with Higgins but also capable of kindness when the young woman’s feelings are at stake.
It is the pair of performers in the lead roles, however, that polish the multi-faceted gem created by the company as a whole. Leah Mari as Eliza shows, again, that she is a step above most actresses with her level of experience – she’s 23 – by absolutely plunging into a role that has given some of the biggest names in musical theatre the platform for their careers. She handles the quiet nuances and the shrieking peaks of the character with equal aplomb, is a striking figure in the show’s gorgeous costumes and has – and this is not said lightly – the vocal tone to equal Julie Andrews, arguably her most famous predecessor in this role (and as Maria in The Sound Of Music, in which Mari also excelled). And Mari has a greater range…
Craig Urbani is a fixture as a leading man in large musicals, but this role offers him more scope than most to flex his range of skills to their fullest world-class extent. He embraces Henry Higgins’ bombastic, clueless, casual misogyny in a way that both makes clear the obvious issues with such attitudes and makes the humour inherent in their brutal satirization impossible not to laugh at, even as you shake your head disbelievingly. His elocution – as is true with the whole cast – is superb, as it must be for the character to be convincing, and when a little humanity finally makes its way to the fore in an ending slightly tweaked to be less, well, sad (after all, why would she end up with him?), he makes that transition believable as well.
Director Steven Stead corrals his cast in such a way that every complex ensemble interaction looks both meticulous and effortless, with Duane Alexander’s choreography further adding to the capably relaxed tone, Greg King’s set design superb (his version of Higgins’ home gets spontaneous applause when revealed for the first time) and Mark Malherbe’s sound design giving every voice and effect such fantastic clarity that you notice it for its excellence – a rare accomplishment in this field. All of this is part of a complete package that requires extraordinary effort to find fault with, should you be in the mood to try. It is rich, layered, magnificently crafted stuff that pays luxuriant tribute to a script that is funnier, faster and more facetious than many will remember from previous productions.
Musically mandatory.