When I was a lad and Julie Andrews was on the cover of our family LP of My Fair Lady, my unbroken voice loved to mimic hers, privately of course. When she was passed over for the film version I shared the shock of all around me. Then when she won her Best Actress Oscar in 1965 for Mary Poppins, beating Audrey Hepburn’s Eliza Doolittle (with her singing voice dubbed by Marni Nixon), I rejoiced with the rest of my known world.

But when The Sound of Music hit the big screen it was trendy to think she was a saccharine goody two-shoes who epitomised the culture we Baby Boomers were busy countering. And yet … we’d grown accustomed to her face, and voice, which was secretly one of our favourite things, and we still hummed along on the inside whenever her songs graced the airwaves.

A generation later, Georgia Jamieson Emms, as scripted by her sister Francesca (Frankie) Emms, caught the wannabe performer bug early, yearned to arise from her embarrassing teenage body and BE Julie Andrews – and now in the third trimester of her second pregnancy, Georgia is far from growing out of that passion.  

Fortunately, Heather O’Carroll, BATS Theatre’s relatively new Programme Manager, shares the Emms girls’ love of Julie and is proud to say These Are A Few of My Favourite Sings is the first show she chose to programme.

The large leather chair seems curiously at odds with the default screen image of Julie’s Maria skipping through the spring flowers of an Austrian mountain – but we quickly accept it’s the boy-toy sprinkled resting place for a mother-of-one and mother-to-be of another – and later it quietly echoes the “one enormous chair” Eliza Doolittle thinks would be “loverly” in a room somewhere. Meanwhile director Adam Macaulay has cleverly conspired to lower our expectations of any cavorting about with carpet bags or brollies.

This show is in no way a send-up, except of Georgia herself, in a gently self-deprecating way. Amid the relaxed telling of the story of her fixation with Julie, Georgia’s exquisite soprano voice faithfully honours Julie Andrews’ qualities as, accompanied by Hugh McMillan on electric piano, she shares songs from The Sound of Music, My Fair Lady, Thoroughly Modern Millie, The Boyfriend, Mary Poppins and The King and I.

Although she was good friends with Audrey Hepburn, the sweet revenge of beating her to that Oscar sees My Fair Lady’s film producer Jack Warner become the target of Eliza’s “I can do bloody well without you” from that show. And comparing Georgia’s own best friend Emily with Julie’s best friend Carol (Burnett) allows a delightful series of childhood slides to accompany ‘Getting to Know You’ from The King and I.

There is no need to ask the opening night’s full-house of musical aficionados a second time to sing along with ‘Do Re Mi’, ‘My Favourite Things’ and ‘Edelweiss’.  

Performed with unpretentious charm and high quality, These Are A Few of My Favourite Sings is a splendid complement to The Better Best Possible Album Party That Anybody Has Ever Been Two which follows it on The Propeller Stage, and Smells Like Xmas which plays upstairs under the Heyday Dome. Like any good Christmas fare, there’s something for everyone at BATS this festive season. 

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