My Fair Lady at the Guthrie

Valiant and übertalented HowWasTheShow.com-ers, Janet Preus and John Olive, attended the Tuesday evening performance of My Fair Lady (at the Guthrie, through Aug 31). They then betook themselves down to Sea Change for beverages, salty french fries and pithy conversation, excerpted herewith:

John Olive: The audience enjoyed My Fair Lady, insanely.

Janet Preus: They did and for good reason. The [Alan Jay] Lerner and [Frederick] Lowe songs are a marvel. Tuneful, clever, zippy, yet pointed, character-driving. “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly.”

JO: Boffo.

JP: And this My Fair Lady, for the most part, presents the songs extremely well.

JO: I found the show TV-esque, breezy, fizzy – and mud-puddle shallow. But it works and the songs are marvelous. Guthrie tickets are expensive, but here the public gets good value.

JP: The story of Eliza Doolittle becoming “a duchess,” overcoming her Cockney background, simply by changing the way she talks, has tremendous resonance. It’s all about class and contemporary Americans don’t know, or care, about the old British class system. This production presents the brilliant songs brilliantly and pooh-poohs the class issue, but who cares. Well, I do.

JO: This is definitely a Lerner and Lowe production. I couldn’t help but think of the Ten Thousand Things production of My Fair Lady which I reviewed a few years back. They cut the play to shreds, and for the most part they couldn’t sing, but the George Bernard Shaw story [My Fair Lady is based on Shaw’s play Pygmalion] came through vividly. TTT presented us with a Shaw show and it was wonderful.

What did you think of the performances?

JP: I adored Tony Sheldon as Pickering. He was goofy, sweet, and he countered Jeff McCarthy [as Higgins] at every turn. Sheldon gives My Fair Lady a richness and multi-layered size.

I also thought Tyler Michaels as Freddy was terrific. Lord, can he sing. “Now That I’m On The Street Where You Live.” Wow. Higgins mocks the idea of Eliza marrying Freddy, but I thought he was a real catch: charming, accepting of her background, and he really loves her. Why not?

JO:  Michaels brilliantly played the Emcee in Latté Da’s recent Cabaret. He is a super-talented young man and he’s going places.

JP: McCarthy I found… unconnected. Higgins is a jerk, but he still has to show us that he is connecting with his fellow players.

JO: He sings well.

JP: He does, but he diesn’t have to. It’s his jerkism that drives the play in Act I, but then it becomes a problem.

JO: I would like to mention Robert O. Bergdahl as Zoltan. It’s a small role, but he was hootingly funny.

JP: I also had trouble with Helen Anker as Eliza. She’s a terrific actor. She really nailed Eliza. But her singing was just adequate.

JO: I liked her as the Cockney Eliza. This she played with creativity and loose-jointed verve. But when she became a “lady,” well, I found her stiff and much less interesting. But I think this is a problem with the story.

This is another G show where they bring in a slew of out-of-towners and I question whether they’re worth the investment. There are locals who could do this play gang-bustersly: Bradley Greenwald, for instance.Another local musical star plays a small part in this show: Cat Brindisi.

JP: Let’s talk about the ending.

JO: In my not-so-humble opinion, My Fair Lady, unlike other musical masterworks of the period, South Pacific, West Side Story, is fatally flawed.

JP: Act 1 works well: can she do it? But in the second act we have to deal with relationship and here My Fair Lady is much less successful. Eliza may want Higgins’ approval, but does she want him?

JO: The issue is Higgins’s pricktitude.

JP: Yes! What do the other characters, specifically, what does Eliza see in him?

JO: I thought [director Joe] Dowling staged the ending poorly. It was all in Higgins’s head. A fantasy.

JP: Really?

JO: That was my interpretation. Usually the play is staged so that Eliza overhears “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face.” This melts her heart and she goes to him. The end. But here she’s still wearing her bejewelled gown and she enters from the wings. A dream figure.

JP: If so, it is staged ineffectively. It goes by too fast to really resonate.It was so ambivalent and took me out of the world of the play.

JO: So what do we think?

JP: The performances are strong. The show has size and power. It’s worth a look for the marvelous songs. What lyric writing! My, my!