My Fair Lady opens with an aggressively active Covent Garden setting, one that feels alive and abrasive with survival in Molly Smith’s broadly realized production. Entertainers and regular folk do acrobatics and vigorously dance in this drab and dirty late night place. The tarts look unwashed and the grimy crowd visually suggest a dense human smell, which is a notable accomplishment by designers Ken Macdonald, Judith Bowden, and Jock Munro, in set, costume, and lighting, respectively.
Note that Eliza does indeed resemble “a squashed cabbage leaf”. Later after her transformation from cockney “good girl” into the socially desirable Miss Doolittle, she will declare with dignified vulnerability, “I’m not dirt under your feet,” but we know throughout that she began as society’s discard.
The appeal of Eliza at the outset of this production is not a given. She is crude, blunt, spunky in a growly voice when angered, and she does make ugly sounds. We don’t automatically deem her nice; we don’t automatically think Audrey Hepburn. Still, although she looks worn but not worn out from surviving, we are touched by her yearning for a dream to come true in “Wouldn’t it be Loverly” and saddened by the reality that this dream has no chance at all in her class-divided world.
Nevertheless, Eliza’s an unselfconsciously feisty gal with cockney fire in her DNA, energetically committed to what she is or what she wants to become. If Higgins condescendingly thinks her “deliciously low,” he merely confirms that his is a protected world. On the other hand, she has been given the strap by her own dad all her life. When, in a softer voice, she reveals an innocence of spirit and a private delicacy of the heart, we are on her side. We feel she deserves her dreams, especially since Deborah Hay as Eliza provides eye-opening human substance throughout. This Eliza has lived a life.
Henry Higgins, deftly inhabited by Benedict Campbell, is crude in his own way, a boorish bully of a man. He is instinctively dismissive of human dignity and emotionally remote and unreachable as he plows ahead brilliantly in his field of study. Intellectually advanced, but otherwise pathetically a child, he dwells safely protected within a box both social and emotional, at least until he’s “grown accustomed to her face.” Campbell’s Higgins is solidly conceived and thoroughly intriguing as a creation who implies a contained wild centre.
As Pickering, Patrick Galligan offers a man of impassioned decency and strength of character who acts as foil to Campbell’s Higgins who has neither. It is a lively pairing with each man decidedly forward in manner as they disagree endlessly. Eliza’s dad, Alfred Doolittle, played by Neil Barclay, has initially a grimy lousiness about him. He is a man both unprincipled and unwashed who is happily secure in being too poor to have morals as he ekes out both existence and drink. Pragmatic and principled in his own way, he is an appealing S.O.B. Sharry Flett as Mrs. Higgins is a poised, compassionate, and wisely assertive mom to her embarrassing son, while Mark Uhre does Freddy with an endearingly sincere lack of depth and a pleasant resonance of voice.
There are many delights in this production, including Eliza’s short fuse that anticipates effrontery. Campbell’s resonant singing voice, as it breaks the Rex Harrison mold with actual melody, demonstrates the beauty of sound in the English language of which Higgins constantly speaks. The way we are compelled to struggle along with Eliza with marbles in her mouth and one swallowed puts us decidedly in her court. Her faux pas are funny because we feel her struggle to do what she has newly learned, although her crude roots keep popping out as in “move your blooming ass.”
This is not a comfortably era-reproducing show that takes upper class rituals and status quo as the way of the world. It is rather a declaration of the inherent, albeit sometimes crudely shown, worth of lower classes who have their own harsh realities to live. Thus Eliza shows herself to be a woman of confidence even when she is vulnerable and not a marionette playing to the rules of society.
Macdonald’s set of birdcage motif is a visually busy yet appealing creation of many verticals that counterbalance the horizontal expanse of the stage. The projected silhouettes of birds in flight, however, seem an extraneous touch, perhaps pointless. The costumes at the Ascot races are rather out of tune with the production and garish- why??- and ugh as in ughly.
In sum, there is much life in all the curbside dirt of this My Fair Lady. The choreography bursts with a vibrant street energy that is somewhat mirrored in Higgins’ animated and almost athletic stage presence. In this extraverted production, Henry is always pacing, always briskly walking the expanse of the stage. Like the poor, he is made of energy and so, as a result, this is an energetic production. And as we always hope, we do love Eliza in the end- if not much sooner. Both she and Higgins are obviously not equipped for the emotions that ensue after their first encounter, and their awkwardness in sensitivity gives this production an unforced heart.