MUSICAL THEATRE REVIEW:
MY FAIR LADY
30 MAY/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4 out of 5

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE -  This is one time when scoring only a fair success simply wouldn’t have been good enough by half. After all, in tackling MY FAIR LADY for the first time in its 50-year history, the Shaw Festival is not merely casting a bizarrely belated cloak of theatrical legitimacy over Alan Jay Lerner’s and Frederick Loewe’s musical stage adaptation of the great man’s Pygmalion, but they’ve also chosen to completely re-shape a classic, re-imagining large swaths of director Moss Hart’s 1956 vision of what has come to be considered an iconic work.

So excitement was high as the curtain went up this weekend on the Shaw’s new LADY, on the stage of the Festival Theatre — and happily, it was just about as high when the curtain fell. For while this new version isn’t likely to achieve the fame of the production it replaced, it will almost certainly serve to win another generation of fans for what has, over time, proven itself to be a most enduring literary musical.

Under director Molly Smith, the timeless story of the transformation of Eliza Doolittle from street urchin to elegant lady — chimney swallow to bird of paradise — springs to vibrant life. Leading lady Deborah Hay steps into Eliza’s shoes with a winning boldness, taming the heart of irascible Henry Higgins, tyrannical linguist, played by Benedict Campbell.

Besides Hay’s otherwise impressive performance, there is much to like here, not the least of which is the magic wrought by set designer Ken MacDonald in concert with projection designer Adam Larsen as they conspire to bring Victorian London and the era of the Crystal Palace to sparkling life, their bird in a gilded cage vision falling short only in the certain intimacy needed to frame the very heart of the story.

And not surprisingly in what continues to be one of the continent’s most enduring theatrical ensembles, there is no shortage of fine work from a supporting cast that includes Neil Barclay in the role of Eliza’s fair-weather father Alfred, Patrick Galligan as Higgins’ sidekick, Colonel Pickering, Sharry Flett as Higgins’ elegant and long-suffering mother and Mark Uhre as the hapless street dweller Freddy Eynsford-Hill.

There remain a few casting problems — Campbell has everything for a perfect Higgins, except a certain and necessary indefinable but magnetic charm, while Galligan’s youthful Pickering lacks avuncular grace — but this production certainly sounds impressive, thanks to the musical direction of Paul Sportelli, who provides a lush bed for a legion of memorable songs (although John Lott’s sound design could still use a little fine tuning).

Working with choreographer Daniel Pelzig, Smith keeps the action swirling, particularly in the rough-and-tumble Covent Garden scenes, but one can’t help but wish Smith had taken the time to teach Pelzig that on occasion, less in the way of ornamental flourish, can add up to a whole lot more.

Indeed, the only major misstep in the entire production would seem to be some of the unfortunate costuming excesses wrought by Judith Bowden, who in her attempt to expunge the memory of Cecil Beaton’s gloriously memorable Ascot Gavotte, seemingly transplants the scene to Rio, at the height of Mardi Gras. And in a world mad about a little hat called a fascinator, hers could best be described as detonators. Still, the story at the heart of the production wins out in the end, and the Shaw Festival gives us a production of MY FAIR LADY that is happily on the plus side of fair, indeed.