My Fair Lady

This was the first time I had seen a Swanage Musical Theatre Company production and it was an absolute delight in every way. From start to finish, the standard achieved across the board was stunning, matching that of a professional company. As soon as the orchestra struck up the overture the quality and coordination of their musicianship was clear and they continued to show this in every number. Everyone in the orchestra was very accomplished and I particularly enjoyed the clarinet in Wouldn’t It Be Loverly. The percussion was spot-on throughout and a great asset, and the orchestration and playing in I Could Have Danced All Night was another high point. Congratulations to them all and to the Musical Director, Nick Stewart.

The choreography, too, was perfect, with a variety of style and pace and it was expertly executed by both principals and the chorus; from the stately moves in Ascot Open Day to the high-energy dancing in Get Me To The Church and the reprise of A Little Bit of Luck. The whole cast had clearly worked very hard and the quality of the singing matched that of the dancing. Enthusiasm and energy abounded, and their impact was enhanced by the superb display of costumes. The spectacle of all the ladies and gentlemen at both Ascot and the Embassy Ball was absolutely stunning. A special mention is thoroughly deserved for all who worked on and devised all the many and wonderful costumes for the production – they really caught both the period and the characters.

The sets throughout were very impressive, and both cleverly and well designed. The opening Covent Garden set with its four imposing columns was striking and a pleasure to look at in itself, a perfect back drop to the action on stage, but equally impressive was the way in which that set was transformed in quick time and with great slickness into Professor Higgins’ study/library. The columns were incorporated into the study/library walls and the street scene flats were turned around to become the library walls. There were some lovely touches of self-referential humour included, such as a poster for a production of Pygmalion on a wall in the Covent Garden set, and a portrait of George Bernard Shaw on a wall in Higgins’ study. Mrs Higgins’ house and terrace were represented very simply and effectively with just a patio table with tea items, two chairs, two pot plants and three windows at the back. These windows, lowered and raised smoothly from the flies, were also used to represent houses in the street scene for the song On The Street Where You Live. Unfortunately it wasn’t possible to set them still after they had been lowered, and as a result they swayed gently a bit from side to side during the scene, which was slightly distracting. This was a very small thing though, in the overall scheme of otherwise perfect sets. Well done and congratulations to all involved in producing those sets.

Congratulations too to the stage management team for the smooth, efficient and quick moving of props and furniture on and off stage between scenes. There was a lot of moving to be done, and the way in which it was achieved was very impressive.  It was a complex production technically, so well done to everyone involved on that side. I was a little puzzled by dry ice smoke seeming to appear at Ascot, but perhaps that was to suggest a bit of mist, and the effect certainly worked really well in the Covent Garden and night-time street scenes. The ‘fog’ did at one point hang on into the next scene and location – inside Professor Higgins’ study, but that was unavoidable. The quality of lighting and sound was very high, with both speaking and singing voices coming across very clearly through the sound system. When very occasionally the balance wasn’t quite right, for example with the sound level coming over too loud at the start of one Alfred Doolittle’s songs, it was rapidly rectified.

The standard of both the acting and the singing was exemplary throughout and across the whole cast, from chorus to leads. The chorus created and maintained characters for themselves, and I really enjoyed the way the large chorus moved and swayed in time with Wouldn’t It Be Loverly, while staying in character and acting very effectively a crowd of people at Covent Garden, chatting with each other (in mime, of course!) in groups. The actress rendered a delightfully efficient and reproving Mrs Pearce who upbraided Professor Higgins with vim and vigour, and the butler, maids and servants of the Higgins household were very convincing, as well as producing lovely harmony singing in the various iterations of The Servants’ Chorus (‘Poor Professor Higgins’); so too were all the other actors, and huge praise is due to all for the quality of their acting and singing, including the lovely harmony singing of Alfred Doolittle’s ‘mates’. All played important parts in telling the story and maintaining the audience’s engagement in it. The comments I heard from audience members, both during and after the performance, were testament to how much they enjoyed it and how well-executed they thought it all was.

There was great energy and verve as Professor Zoltan Karpathy and the actor cast brought out the nuances of Freddy Eynsford-Hill very well, which was important and an achievement as that part can sometimes be rendered as somewhat two-dimensional.  Mrs Eynsford-Hill was excellent, and, as well as being part of the ensemble, as most of the cast were, she also featured as one of the Professor’s servants. There was a very convincing Mrs Higgins and Colonel Pickering was played to perfection. His singing voice suited the character and I particularly enjoyed both the toreador choreography he executed immaculately with Higgins and his pitch-perfect rendering of the telephone conversation with his old chum ‘Boozy’. The performance of  Alfred Doolittle was a delight, delivering both good acting and powerful singing in both melody and harmony. His acting in the scene where he comes to Professor Higgins’ house to retrieve Eliza was particularly strong, revealing the awkwardness underneath the bravado, and he also clearly has a talent for playing the spoons!

Special praise is due to the two leads, playinh Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins. As well as giving very strong performances individually there was a clear, powerful dynamic between them, which of course is at the heart of the drama. This was shown particularly well in their scene together after the song You Did It. This was extremely accomplished, convincing in both cockney and ‘refined lady’ characterisations, and achieved the challenging feat of revealing the flower girl underneath the surface of the lady. She also sang exceptionally well. The glee in her expression when she sang about Higgins’ execution in Just You Wait was superb. At the end of that song an audience member behind me whispered to her companion ‘she’s very good’. Yes indeed!

A tour-de-force performance as Higgins was delivered, superb in every way. He commanded the stage with his opening song Why Can’t The English and continued as a power-house of the production throughout. He didn’t hold back from showing Higgins’ aggression, arrogance and high-handedness, and his impatience towards Eliza, so that when Higgins occasionally came over soft and tender towards her it had all the more impact. As well as the sheer energy of his performance (word-perfect, with so many lines), he carried off with aplomb the humour in the part, whether in the slapstick of banging into the gramophone and setting off a recording as he leaves in anger after arguing with Eliza, or delivering the irony in ‘A patient man am I.. who never could… let an insulting remark escape his lips’. That song, I’m An Ordinary Man, required a great deal of clever acting and he did it brilliantly. He also showed great subtlety and emotion in the song I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face and I heard a member of the audience say at the end of it: ‘outstanding!’.

A mark of the excellence of this production was that, at least on the performance I attended, there were no prompts. The whole evening was superb: entertaining, uplifting, absorbing and all to a standard of which the whole company should be very proud indeed.

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