(no subject)
The lady's great, the play's fair
May 12, 2008
Richard Ouzounian
Theatre Critic
My Fair Lady
2.5* (out of 4)
By Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Until May 31 at the Toronto Centre for the Arts, 5040 Yonge St. 416-872-1111
The lady's really loverly, but nothing else around her is of quite the same spectacular calibre.
That's the verdict on the production of My Fair Lady that opened at the Toronto Centre for the Arts on Friday as part of Dancap Productions' season.
The classic Lerner-Loewe musical, based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, is still one of the near-perfect works of the form.
Phonetics professor Henry Higgins bets a friend that - purely through proper speech and manners - he can turn "a crushed cabbage leaf" of a flower seller into "a consort fit for a king."
It's a definite treat to see it again and an equal delight that the classy main hall of the Toronto Centre for the Arts is back in business once more, being used for the purpose for which it was created.
But the production that's reopened it is definitely a mixed blessing.
The good news first: Lisa O'Hare is quite a spectacular Eliza Doolittle, capable of bringing life to all the various stages in the character's transformation.
She's a scrappy but compelling flower seller in the early scenes, complete with a fine cockney accent.
Her protean attempts to learn how to say: "The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain" have a valiant charm and when she finally emerges as a triumphant lady, it's a treat to behold.
But almost nothing else in this production is up to her standard. This particular revival originally began in 2001 at the National Theatre of Great Britain, with no less of a pair of titans than Cameron Mackintosh producing and Trevor Nunn directing it, where it was a great hit.
Like many "revisionist" shows of the period, it tried to find darker social meaning in the work, and so we find Liza facing a band of suffragettes and riding the underground.
Anthony Ward's sets and Nunn's staging keep it all moving, but I found Matthew Bourne's choreography a bit on the odd side, turning "With a Little Bit of Luck" into Son of Stomp and offering us the dullest Embassy Ball in history. (It now starts Act II, by the way, instead of ending Act I and makes a mess out of the following number that's supposed to tell us what happened: "You Did It.")
But even if all of this might have originally dazzled London, what we're dealing with here is a touring production six years later on the other side of the Atlantic in the hands of a team who have "restaged" and "redirected" the original.
I wouldn't want to make any bets as to the last time Nunn saw this production, but if he had witnessed the sloppy and indistinct version of the show's first 10 minutes that I saw on Friday night, I doubt he would have been amused.
The actors are a decidedly mixed bunch. Christopher Cazenove blusters and booms as Higgins, missing the sharp, acid precision that the best portrayers of the role (Rex Harrison, Ian Richardson, Colm Feore) have brought to it. There's too much oil here and not enough vinegar.
And I've seen strangers wedged next to each other on the TTC who display more physical chemistry than this Higgins and Eliza do.
Walter Charles is a distressingly frail-looking Pickering, while Tim Jerome plays Alfred P. Doolittle with such an excessive leer that he looks like he's auditioning for the Demon King in a panto.
Justin Bohon's acting as Freddy is a bit tentative, but his singing voice is lovely and it's interesting that the two biggest rounds of applause in the show came after his rendition of "On the Street Where You Live" and O'Hare's incandescent "I Could Have Danced All Night" - two songs that were delivered simply, as written.
Marni Nixon (who dubbed Audrey Hepburn's voice in the film of My Fair Lady) is a wonderfully tart and witty Mrs. Higgins, but too many of the other cast members have sloppy diction, and the balance between the singers and the orchestra was far from ideal.
Musical theatre is back at the Toronto Centre for the Arts and that makes me happy. It will make me happier when it welcomes a better production than this one.
May 12, 2008
Richard Ouzounian
Theatre Critic
My Fair Lady
2.5* (out of 4)
By Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. Until May 31 at the Toronto Centre for the Arts, 5040 Yonge St. 416-872-1111
The lady's really loverly, but nothing else around her is of quite the same spectacular calibre.
That's the verdict on the production of My Fair Lady that opened at the Toronto Centre for the Arts on Friday as part of Dancap Productions' season.
The classic Lerner-Loewe musical, based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, is still one of the near-perfect works of the form.
Phonetics professor Henry Higgins bets a friend that - purely through proper speech and manners - he can turn "a crushed cabbage leaf" of a flower seller into "a consort fit for a king."
It's a definite treat to see it again and an equal delight that the classy main hall of the Toronto Centre for the Arts is back in business once more, being used for the purpose for which it was created.
But the production that's reopened it is definitely a mixed blessing.
The good news first: Lisa O'Hare is quite a spectacular Eliza Doolittle, capable of bringing life to all the various stages in the character's transformation.
She's a scrappy but compelling flower seller in the early scenes, complete with a fine cockney accent.
Her protean attempts to learn how to say: "The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain" have a valiant charm and when she finally emerges as a triumphant lady, it's a treat to behold.
But almost nothing else in this production is up to her standard. This particular revival originally began in 2001 at the National Theatre of Great Britain, with no less of a pair of titans than Cameron Mackintosh producing and Trevor Nunn directing it, where it was a great hit.
Like many "revisionist" shows of the period, it tried to find darker social meaning in the work, and so we find Liza facing a band of suffragettes and riding the underground.
Anthony Ward's sets and Nunn's staging keep it all moving, but I found Matthew Bourne's choreography a bit on the odd side, turning "With a Little Bit of Luck" into Son of Stomp and offering us the dullest Embassy Ball in history. (It now starts Act II, by the way, instead of ending Act I and makes a mess out of the following number that's supposed to tell us what happened: "You Did It.")
But even if all of this might have originally dazzled London, what we're dealing with here is a touring production six years later on the other side of the Atlantic in the hands of a team who have "restaged" and "redirected" the original.
I wouldn't want to make any bets as to the last time Nunn saw this production, but if he had witnessed the sloppy and indistinct version of the show's first 10 minutes that I saw on Friday night, I doubt he would have been amused.
The actors are a decidedly mixed bunch. Christopher Cazenove blusters and booms as Higgins, missing the sharp, acid precision that the best portrayers of the role (Rex Harrison, Ian Richardson, Colm Feore) have brought to it. There's too much oil here and not enough vinegar.
And I've seen strangers wedged next to each other on the TTC who display more physical chemistry than this Higgins and Eliza do.
Walter Charles is a distressingly frail-looking Pickering, while Tim Jerome plays Alfred P. Doolittle with such an excessive leer that he looks like he's auditioning for the Demon King in a panto.
Justin Bohon's acting as Freddy is a bit tentative, but his singing voice is lovely and it's interesting that the two biggest rounds of applause in the show came after his rendition of "On the Street Where You Live" and O'Hare's incandescent "I Could Have Danced All Night" - two songs that were delivered simply, as written.
Marni Nixon (who dubbed Audrey Hepburn's voice in the film of My Fair Lady) is a wonderfully tart and witty Mrs. Higgins, but too many of the other cast members have sloppy diction, and the balance between the singers and the orchestra was far from ideal.
Musical theatre is back at the Toronto Centre for the Arts and that makes me happy. It will make me happier when it welcomes a better production than this one.