Another reason is a saccharine performance in one of the two key roles. Part of the reason is that, unlike "My Fair Lady," the 1949 Rodgers and Hammerstein collaboration with Joshua Logan turns on a social issue that has lost dramatic immediacy. Nunn does similar work with "South Pacific," though with less success. The staging also closes with an image that finally lets you know the true feelings these two have discovered for each other.
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When she sings that she could have danced all night, it's as if she feels she's finally won it.Īlthough "My Fair Lady" will never be mistaken for a feminist tract, Nunn stages the ending in a way that gives Eliza stature without either kowtowing to the PC police or undercutting Higgins.
Unlike Harrison, Pryce is a robust singer, as is Joanna Riding, whose Eliza, while growing increasingly polished and poised as well as articulate, never loses her street-fighter's toughness, demanding Higgins's respect at every turn. As played by the marvelous Jonathan Pryce, Higgins's interests in Eliza always seem to be purely professional. The director constantly stokes the comic antagonism between them, letting the music and lyrics evoke the audience's growing desire for a romance. Pickering's wager that he cannot, as boasted, take this "cold-blooded murderer of the English tongue" and in six months pass her off as a duchess.īut in Nunn's production, which originated at the Royal National Theatre and has moved to the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, you're not sure by the end of the first act whether Higgins and Eliza will even like each other, much less fall in love. The undercurrent of romantic tension steadily rises after Higgins accepts Col.
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The 1964 movie almost winks at you the minute Rex Harrison's exquisitely articulate Henry Higgins, professor of phonetics, starts charmingly insulting Audrey Hepburn's scruffy Eliza Doolittle, peddler of flowers. But ironically, by staying as close as possible to the unsentimental spirit of Shaw's play, Lerner and Loewe transformed it into a masterpiece of romantic storytelling, and Nunn has taken a cue from all three originators.
Romance? Don't be so bourgeois, man!īut in adding scenes, Lerner deliberately avoided overt romance in favor of witty, literate comedy in which romance is implied - primarily by Frederick Loewe's beautifully lyrical score. The old socialist Shaw was most interested in entertainingly dissecting the ways language can ruthlessly and almost permanently divide people by class. Meaning, in this case, not Alan Jay Lerner's 1956 book but Bernard Shaw's comparatively austere 1916 play "Pygmalion," on which the book is based. Nunn hasn't rethought "My Fair Lady" as much as he's gone back to the spirit of the original, simple text. In particular, his love of American musicals is lighting up the West End, what with audiences hugely enjoying his revivals of two classics, Lerner and Loewe's "My Fair Lady" and Rodgers and Hammerstein's "South Pacific." Both of which just happen to follow on the high-kickin' heels of his 1998 revival of "Oklahoma!," which was roundly hailed by London critics and will finally open on Broadway next month. You can sum up what's currently hot about London theater in two words: Trevor Nunn.
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