For over 65 years now, My Fair Lady has started with the same unassuming premise. Henry Higgins walks onto a busy street and declares “Why can’t the English teach their children how to speak?” This is followed by a number that points out the value of good elocution, finding an excuse to insult anyone who doesn’t speak correctly. There’s plenty of fun jabs in Alan Jay Lerner’s lyrics, though what becomes clear is that Henry isn’t a man to be praised. He is someone who listens not to what is being said, but how. Place an ‘H’ out of place and he’ll demean you to guttersnipe status. Given that humble flower girl Eliza Doolittle speaks in a creaky, comical Cockney accent, there’s plenty to think of her as lesser. Henry has the better clothes, the better diction. Why should we care about this woman who hangs on British streets among the beggars?
By the time the story shifts, the real heart emerges. Compared to the perfect precision of the opening number, Eliza’s “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” has this offbeat charm. Accompanied by a harmonizing quartet, she wanders the stage playing out a fantasy of feeling valued and loved. Suddenly, the accent that blocked her from Henry is gone to the audience. Lerner pulls a fast one by disarming expectations, allowing the audience to feel compassion for this lowly figure. It may take a whole lot longer for Henry to come close to acknowledging her humanity, but the story’s theme of language connecting and dividing everyone has become clear. Henry has the words but not the heart. Eliza has the heart but not the words. How do they find that balance?
The Segerstrom Center for the Arts was lucky to have a touring production of the 2018 Tony-winning revival. While a lot of the story remains the same, there is an essence about it that feels different. On paper, the story of a man singing “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?” should feel like a tired sexist trope. While it’s true that there’s foolishness to Henry’s overall behavior, his character feels more cautionary. He isn’t the hero. Like the best of Broadway shows, the answer is much more complicated. Amid his abuse, he’s helped Eliza understand her self-worth and, in the process, why she shouldn’t need him for dependence.
It’s the story of tables turning, where Eliza goes from a raggedy guttersnipe, in some ways deformed and left to fend for herself. Her story is much more interesting just because of how it shows something internal about the human condition. As the daughter of an alcoholic, she has some choice words at horse races and doesn’t have the social cues of Henry’s upper-class friends. She is given a chance to evoke an evolution of elegance while being inherently disconnected. Lerner’s writing is sharp, finding the comedy of manners poking both ways, where Henry insults Eliza’s character while also reflecting his own inability to connect or feel compassion. It becomes tragic even as the audience laughs, finding a man wanting a woman to evolve while remaining in complete stasis for most of the story. In 2022, it’s more than a trope. It’s a perfect commentary on how men are generally viewed in society.
Of course, this is a show that’s better experienced than simply reciting the plot. As much as Lerner makes for a delicious narrative, it wouldn’t be half as timeless without Frederick Loewe’s phenomenal jaunty songbook, itself playing with the form that molds almost into its own melodic conversation. There’s also the dancing, which in sequences like “With a Little Bit of Luck” add momentary slapstick to the richer narrative. It’s a world that’s ever-growing with personality, breaking down the walls of artificiality to find something essential at the core of the musical form. Compared to the rigidness of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Lerner & Loewe are almost avant-garde.
Of course, the show benefits just as much from the spectacle. If there have been any updates, it’s that the pacing of My Fair Lady now feels tighter. A lot of this is seen in the set changes. During the raucous crowd-pleaser “Get Me to the Church on Time,” a set that has only been seen as an exterior tavern turns around and opens into an orgastic celebration. The choreography is expanded upon and the ensemble even gets to have some cheeky, campy fun doing one of the more whimsical bachelor parties seen on a stage. The craft is where things have improved, building to higher levels of awe. Even the ending sequence has a phenomenal set transition that is mesmerizing in its fluidness.
For a story set in 1912, there’s a lot to admire with its visual design. Henry’s study has an inventiveness that adds to the overall experience. While the room looks familiar to other productions, it’s the ability to rotate during “The Servant’s Chorus” that gives the performance more life, able to reflect the passing of day while showing exteriors as the ensemble sings. In these small inconsequential moments is a personality that gives depth to an otherwise mundane supporting cast. There is resourcefulness to everything, where even the invisible spaces feel more lived in than usual. When mixed with the fantastic costuming work by Catherine Zuber, the show is not only a familiar ring of the classic source material but an update that’s full of life and meaning.
Credit goes to Shereen Ahmed as Eliza for adding the emotional complexity to a familiar role. She has a delicate balance of self, mixing the shifting accent with growing confidence. While she starts as someone who is seen as lesser, she becomes stronger than Henry, her songbook turning more into philosophical commentary on words and emotion (“Show Me,” “Without You”). She sings with confidence even as Henry becomes more of a fallen hero: a man who won the battle but lost the war. He has made Eliza into royalty while he whimpers off helplessly. Laird Mackintosh does an excellent job of being just superior enough to the rest of the cast to make him both resentful yet also sympathetic in a comical way.
For the most part, this touring production of My Fair Lady remains the same. Even then, the 65+ year old story has a timelessness to it that allows the subtext to remain compelling. It’s not a story of a man making over a woman, but someone realizing their self-worth, finding that if one learns how to properly communicate, they can achieve happiness. It’s at the heart of a show that has earworm after earworm, making it difficult to ever forget its appeal. The revival delivers on every front, telling the loverly story with passion while adding small traces of spectacle that never loses sight of the bigger picture. It may be an old and familiar story, but so long as we continue to bump into each other on the street, it’ll be a story worth telling.
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