The rain in Spain will be falling mainly over Dixon St for the next week as the Wellington Footlights Society continues its run of My Fair Lady.

The well-known musical follows the broke Cockney flower seller Eliza Doolittle and her lessons with phonetics professor Henry Higgins as he tries to teach her ‘proper’ English. [More]

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Shortly after this majestical show hit the boards for the first time I recall that the hit parades had about a dozen My Fair Lady hit numbers bouncing round the charts performed by everyone from Julie Andrews to Frank Sinatra to Duane Eddy.

The entire world became overly accustomed to its face. Context was lost until the film version came along and restored the notion that this is no catchy juke box collection. It is one of the finest marriages of modern literature and musical stage ever devised. And the irony is that George Bernard Shaw had never wanted a bar of it. He had snagged an Oscar for writing the film of Pygmalion in 1938 and abhorred the whole shooting box. 

Then along came Lerner & Loewe and Pygmalion got lucky. These American guys were supernaturally good. They had an ear for Britain (and indeed for France if their Gigi is anything to go by). They went off in the iwee smalls just to listen to the cadences of workday London voices in the fruit market. Their Brigadoon was a stunner but My Fair Lady came out several lengths ahead.

It’s so good I feel that if a journeyman director can do it with moderate tunefulness, well-drilled dancing and competent singing they will give the audience a worthwhile night in the theatre. So, what else can be added when the writers have made the thing almost director-proof?

Director Michael Stebbings has eschewed any attempt to overwhelm his audience with a re-creation of the olde worlde visual London as many companies have, with their fast revolving stages that can whizz you from the market to the studio at the press of a button. The ‘number eight fencing wire’ solution in this smart little production is to convert a brick wall into a bookshelf by use of portable vertical panels embossed with contact plastic. Cast members spirit all the desks, couches and paraphernalia in and out with alacrity and accuracy under cover of darkness).

Stebbings just has confidence in Shaw’s ‘before its time’ story of the strength and resourcefulness of an unschooled woman in a brutally male Edwardian world. A world in which one’s speech is a form of social DNA profiling that sorts out the sheep from the golden fleeces. Eliza Doolittle is no more than a betting slip written on by self-absorbed linguist Henry Higgins to his in-house Jiminy Cricket Colonel Pickering. He is a mule of a man who treats Eliza as just a project to be manipulated and re-formed but is wrong-footed when she melts his self-centred heart in a 150-minute slow cooker.

Mr Stebbings and Musical Director Sue Windsor seem to share a common artistic vision and are blessed with some marvellous performers to give this enduring tale musical and human shape. Catherine Gavigan-Binnie as Eliza looks demurely indestructible and sings like an angel. (The cast compete with the audience to see who will fall in love with her first). She has the heart of a Bodicea and can go from shrill to huskily knowing, all the while turning on a 1913 sixpence. Her character development within the piece is believable and cunningly layered as between that fateful day in Covent Garden when Henry Higgins strutted into view and the time she finally took him apart.

Ed Blunden’s Higgins reciprocally matches Eliza’s own journey, in the sense that he becomes drained in small increments of the stubborn male ignorance and indifference to others that allows him to treat this gorgeous lady like a disposable lab rat.

When they stand face to face in a fleeting spotlight at the end of the show they seem to have become two sides of the same coin. Higgins has partly given her more correct diction but she has discovered her own womanliness. In return, she has given him the wake-up call from Hell. They don’t just fall in love a la Hollywood chick flick. To be precise about it, they don’t fall in love at all. Their reciprocal gift is self-knowledge, and one needed to know more than the other.

Here are some of the moments that made the opening night magical for everyone there. On Bob Rowell’s clever ‘objects rather than walls’ set, reminiscent of those in Citizen Kane, Eliza sings her heart out about wanting security in a dark world where warmth and tenderness are her true goals. They are “All I want” – all being the operative word. This is no day dreaming but the real social improvement thing that Shaw was vigorously pointing at and Gavigan-Binnie more than fits the bill.  

Her dustman father Alfred Doolittle, robustly played by Patrick Jennings, is still not quite over sowing his wild oats and sells his daughter to Higgins for five UK Pounds to fund his current projects. Less Stanley Holloway and more swivel-eyed Artful Dodger he gleefully belts out ‘With a Little Bit of Luck’ and ‘I’m Getting Married in the Morning’ (once he’s luckily gone from ne’re-do-well to well-to-do). Both times he brings the house down while being supported with a very solid ensemble and dancing routines that are hugely pleasing and energetic but not overly elaborate.

The cast all look at ease strutting their stuff. Choreographers Shereen Capper and India Loveday must be highly complimented on that pleasingly clean and measured approach. I particularly like the reprise of the second number which ends in a seemingly sunlit group picture of the wedding party with a light quality that harks back to those old London scenes painted by Turner and Co. Neatly done: Lighting Designer, Isadora Lao. 

Tears come to our collective eyes when Eliza is gruellingly but, from an acting standpoint, skillfully put through elocution hell by martinet Higgins. But then comes the breakthrough and we choke at the moment the newly correct and seductive Eliza voice emerges. ‘The Rain in Spain’ gives way to ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’: trios and quartets that involve first Colonel Pickering, who is endearingly and humanely rendered by Mike Bryant, then by Mrs Pearce the housekeeper, played both with a steely eye and a kind heart by Margaret Hill. and her two maids.

The crowd cheers its lungs out firstly in Eliza’s triumph of success then utter elation for a lady who is pumping the adrenaline. No mean feat for the latter at three in the morning. The mood, the voice, the unique context, the peerless orchestration all align to deliver an ecstasy rarely found in any art form today. The bullseye of the night!

Then under the tutelage of Higgins’ mother, rendered with much empathy for Eliza by Ellie Stewart, our newly well-spoken heroine is whizzed off to Ascot to be test driven in ‘polite’ society.  But before the be-gowned Eliza comes on, Emma Stevens and Nadia Newman show off their ensemble costume wares in the renowned ‘Ascot Gavotte’ (or as they sing here, “Ascit”).

This is our first glimpse of eye-popping opulence in dress from the toffs. Our eyes, though, are gazumped by our ears in a marvellously dissociated rendition of the tune and accompanying horse gallop. The hardworking and versatile ensemble does this to perfection. It is English social ritual performed as if by the wax inhabitants of Madame Tussauds. Precise, colourful and crass. Top marks for social satire right there.

Then we are privileged to see Gavigan-Binnie absolutely nail one of the finest conversation scenes that Shaw ever wrote. To an enthralled crew of onlookers, Eliza deliciously recounts in the poshest of diction the most brutal of bad goings-on in the East End that the Ascot crowd are ever likely to hear. “Those what done her in would have done her in for a hat pin never mind a hat” (as if taking about new handbags).

It is a tour de force. Side-splitting, bizarre and revealing at the one time. Eliza not only out-speaks the society drones, she tells way better stories than they do. She thereby quickly wins the heart of Freddy Eynsford-Smith (Vishan Appanna) who, as we know, hangs around Eliza’s Wimpole Street door and gets to sing the erstwhile chart-topper ‘On the Street where you Live’.

The abovementioned gems of humour and societal comment in many ways overshadow dear Freddy. The great hit song is sung well but seems strangely to disappear as the heat goes on Higgins and the new love interest is no more than a convenient lever for tweaking dear old Henry’s nostrils. Ed Blunden’s character simply goes into jealousy overdrive. The actor skilfully ratchets up his man to the point of abusing Eliza, thereby merely giving her the chance to reveal new depths to her resilience and feminine dignity. Eliza grabs the opportunity with both hands.

Higgins has trotted Eliza out for another credibility ‘test’, this one at an Embassy ball where both the ensemble and Eliza genuinely dazzle in their bejewelled presentation and their acting wiles. Eliza passes with flying colours and becomes Higgins’ new success. The lab rat has negotiated yet another a new maze but seems unimpressed by that analysis. 

When she sang ‘Just You Wait Henry Higgins’ in the first Act she was a tad tongue in cheek, being then just the unwashed boarder. Now she is full-throated banshee and slipper thrower when she contemplates his decapitation. The rise of the female temperature is nicely done and unnerves Higgins who reacts with pained self-pity in ‘Why Can’t’ a Woman be More Like a Man’? He even ropes in his housekeeper Mrs Pearce for moral support but finds that she too is one of the sisterhood (like his mother – strangely enough). Even the desperate musing in ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face’ sounds more like mislaying someone than missing them. Dear Henry is dying from the feet up.

The victory of woman over man is complete.  Eliza refuses/ is genetically unable to behave like a man and simply adds that cherry to her mounting cake. Our two talented leads, ably assisted by a pretty smart Greek chorus-like ensemble, have taken us to precisely where Shaw wanted us to be. Lerner and Loewe have helped by providing words and sounds that have captured both the precise mood and dramatic feel. 

Perhaps the best compliment this pleased-as-Punch reviewer can pay to this brave and intelligent company is now to keep things nice and simple, the way these talented actors and musicians manage to do with this most demanding musical.

There were some opening night glitches, and there were some passing flaws in the singing and playing that will be well sorted out come Saturday. What counts above all else is that Footlights have delivered the beating heart of My Fair Lady / Pygmalion and respected the powerful social insights of the original creator of Eliza and Henry while boldly harnessing the musical savvy of the Lerner & Loew team. They have spun a limited budget into palpable onstage gold. They have moved and captivated their audience’s eyes and hearts for the better. They are a credit to Wellington theatre. I could have stayed all night. 

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