show me

I'm sure you know the feeling. Every now and then a mood just strikes and you realize you can never again be completely satisfied with life until you've gone to see a musical set in London.

It happened to me a few months ago, but, oddly enough, the mood was actually beginning to wear off in the time it took me to locate a theatre in Sydney.

I knew that My Fair Lady was playing somewhere because I'd seen signs on the backs of taxis, but no one seemed to know precisely where it was. When I finally broke down and consulted my trusty Streetwise map, I was amazed to learn the Theatre Royal was not only listed, but also three blocks away from my daily grind.

Finding the theatre thus proved to be significantly easier than expected, though tackling the ticket price was another story. Turns out they run $75 a pop, no matter how much your nose bleeds. Desperate times calls for desperate measures, though, so I shelled it out and settled in to relive London.

Within the first ten minutes I knew I didn't like Henry Higgins' actor. I don't even know his name. Thankfully I hadn't gone in with high expectations for him (he looked ugly on the taxis), but I'd hoped he'd redeem himself in other ways. Turns out, he also couldn't sing, dance or act, which puts a slight damper on a musical. To be fair, I suppose he could act, it was just there was a bit too much method in his madness, if you catch my drift. I'm all for jumping on sofas in real life (apologies here ...), but I just don't see the English gentleman Professor Henry Higgins being a couch-jumper.

Eliza's actress thus had very little to work with by way of a helpful partner-on-stage, but she soldiered on and did reasonably well through the first act, except for her accent (naturally of minor concern in a play obsessed with linguistics). Unfortunately, after intermission she seemed to decide her task was insurmountable and gave up entirely.

Pickering plodded on precisely as a Pickering should, leaving Alfie P. Doolittle to be the little bit of luck of the entire show. Besides the pub owner, he was the only one to really nail his accent, his character and, presumably, Eliza's step mother.

From a technical standpoint the show went off beautifully. The set was of the caliber one would expect, and lighting, sound and props all landed on their feet throughout. There was even a turntable, which made me a bit sentimental until I thought of the blocking notes it would require. It was amazingly well blocked -- the Ascot scene in particular -- and I am sure there is a stage manager running around somewhere with no hair on account of it.

Now I really have to say a bit more about the Ascot scene: the costumes, which were satisfactory throughout the play, but phenomenal for Ascot. The entire cast was in shades of silver, white, black and peach. Maybe that doesn't sound impressive, but it was exceedingly handsome. Dashing, actually. The hats were hats to be reckoned with and were rather closer in size to large umbrellas than your standard sombrero. They were carried off with much style, class and feather-span.

'aving 'ated 'enry 'iggins the 'ole way through, I found him completely irredeemable at the end. Unfortunately, I seem to have blinked and missed precisely what the end was. She of course ("of course" beause the script says so) came back, after having promised he'd never see her again, and he of course (script again) asked for his slippers. The end. There were no slippers handed over (she stayed at his desk; he stayed on the couch and moved his hand from waiting for the slippers back to normalcy), no fight, certainly no kiss ... it was all rather abrupt, and suddenly the turntable was spinning and the extras were taking their bows. I don't even know which way the ending was supposed to have gone.

Now I know the script is rather hard for a Higgins, but I do think it's possible to create a likeable one. Casting, say, Graham Abbey, would be a good start. This Higgins did absolutely nothing to make me like him, though. Eliza had spunk; Pickering was a gentleman; Higgins merely threw his lanky body around as if he were a teenage actor trying to steal the show at an audition.

In the end, the show worked in that I've got my fill of cockney accents, dancing street urchins and hearing "Tottenham Court Road" (which, as a sidenote, I am convinced has the snazziest mosaics of any London Underground station), but, despite Alfie and Ascot, just lacked splash. It was nice and good and all, providing you could get past the bad actor and the Australian-trying-to-be-British accents. Which I couldn't, seeing as I'd paid $75 and had a bloody nose.