Until now, the talk about Opera Australia's production of My Fair Lady has centered so firmly on Dame Julie Andrews you'd swear she was playing not only Eliza Doolittle but Mrs Higgins as well.
Perhaps that's fair given our love for Dame Julie. One would have thought, however, that with the curtain officially rising on the Brisbane season of Lerner and Loewe's musical on Sunday night the spotlight would have turned to those actually on stage.
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Julie Andrews in Brisbane
Musical icon Julie Andrews says it's "pretty special" to be in Brisbane directing My Fair Lady, one of the "great Broadway musicals".
But applause rang out into the darkened Lyric Theatre as the celebrated actor turned director snuck into her row during the overture. Even from her seat in the stalls Dame Julie is a huge crowd pleaser. Then the real magic began.
Brisbane is the second leg of the 60th anniversary production but the first time Charles Edwards (Downton Abbey fans will remember him Lady Edith's lover Michael Gregson) has played Henry Higgins. In the first leg of the tour at the Sydney Opera House Alex Jennings reprised the role he won an Olivier Award for on London's West End in 2003.
Edwards and Jennings may both be veterans of the London stage but musicals are curiously missing from Edwards' CV despite graduating from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in 1992. Yet he totally pulled it off. A great stage presence and wonderful comic timing assisted by a score that is far from vocally demanding allowed Edwards to own Henry. In fact all of the performances were positively smashing with young talent Anna O'Brien as Eliza Doolittle shining in a cast that included names with far wider recognition such as Reg Livermore (Alfred P. Doolittle) and Robyn Nevin (Mrs Higgins).
While other "classic" musicals that have performed well on stage and screen feel horribly dated (anything by Rodgers and Hammerstein and in particular Oklahoma invokes a gag reflex), My Fair Lady retains a charm. This is despite the fact that Henry Higgins is quite possibly the most misogynistic, emotionally retarded character ever created. And if the Eliza the Cockney flowergirl had really become a lady she wouldn't touch the scholar of phonetics with a barge pole. Sure we all like a happily ever after but in George Bernard Shaw's original play Pygmalion Eliza apparently broke free from Higgins. In this more joyous musical she returns to him and not just to ram his cursed slippers down his throat.
It is about as plausible as Julia Gillard leaving Parliament House after her famous 2012 speech and heading straight into the arms of Tony Abbott.
Sorry for the spoiler but if you haven't managed to see the stage production in the past six decades or catch the 1964 film version with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, chances are you aren't about to crawl out from under that rock for this one.
The Opera Australia and John Frost production delivers a version which is religiously faithful to the original. There's not even the faintest whiff of the modern obsession with updating and reimaging classic productions for today's audiences.
Given that Dame Julie was the original Broadway Eliza there was little chance she was about to present a dystopian version but stranger things have been done in the name of art.
This is a nostalgia trip pretty much guaranteed to make you leave the theatre with a smile on your face and a song in your heart. It is lavish and beautifully detailed from the first market scene to the last glass chandelier. The costumes and hats are worth the admission price alone.
The slavish reconstruction of the original feel does mean considerably more curtain closes and blackouts for set changes than we would normally see. It's a small irritation in what is otherwise a stunning production.
The season is short with the production leaving Brisbane for Melbourne on April 30. Move yer bloomin' arse if you don't want to miss out.
My Fair Lady plays at theLyric Theatre QPAC until April 30.
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