Kristi Frank as Eliza Doolittle and Tom Rooney as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady at the Shaw Festival.David Cooper/Shaw Festival
- Title: My Fair Lady
- Book and lyrics: Alan Jay Lerner
- Music: Frederick Loewe
- Directors: Tim Carroll and Kimberley Rampersad
- Actors: Kristi Frank, Tom Rooney
- Company: Shaw Festival
- Venue: Festival Theatre
- City: Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
- Year: Runs to Dec. 22, 2024
Critic’s Pick
My Fair Lady, now getting a very fine production at Ontario’s Shaw Festival, is the Golden Age musical most rewarding to revisit in a new production every decade or so.
This is owing, in part, to Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s endlessly relistenable score with show tunes such as I Could Have Danced All Night and On the Street Where You Live.
But, mainly and plainly, the 1956 musical set in Edwardian London is worth returning to because of the fascinating complex central relationship between Eliza Doolittle, a feisty lower-class flower girl, and Henry Higgins, a haughty phonetics expert who promises to teach her to speak English in a way so that she can pass for a lady.
What is the nature of the bond that builds and then breaks between them? Teacher and student? Father and daughter? Artist and apprentice? How abusive is their relationship? How romantic?
An audience’s perception of My Fair Lady – just like its protagonist – can be totally transformed simply through how language is spoken (and sung); no need for a rewrite of the dialogue, much taken directly from Bernard Shaw’s 1913 comedy Pygmalion, or a concept.
Kristi Frank as Eliza Doolittle and Tom Rooney as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Frank's portrayal of Doolittle at the Shaw Festival is of a strong-willed woman who comes to fall in love with herself – with what she can accomplish when she puts her mind to it.David Cooper/Shaw Festival
Higgins’s infamous final line about his slippers has been delivered in more ways than Kate’s final speech in Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew. But the Shaw’s new production, neatly co-directed by Tim Carroll and Kimberley Rampersad, has lead performances from Kristi Frank and Tom Rooney that make every scene feel like a freshly redecorated room in a handsome old house.
Frank’s Eliza is the strongest willed I’ve ever seen. She always seems to have agency in her journey; it’s clear that she chooses every day to continue to participate in her training, rather than being exploitively experimented upon by Higgins.
When Eliza has her breakthrough with her vowels and aitches, she does a dance in celebration with Higgins. But there’s no hint of a crush on him in her delivery of the subsequent song: “I only know when he / began to dance with me / I could have danced, danced, danced all night.”
Who Eliza seems to have fallen in love with in that moment is herself – with what she can accomplish when she puts her mind to it; she quite literally finds her voice.
As for Rooney, he is an accomplished comic actor who can get a laugh out of anything if he wishes – but he avoids turning the constant stream of misogynist and classist language Higgins hurls at Eliza (”baggage,” “squashed cabbage leaf”) into an insult-comedy routine.
What gradually becomes clear in his performance is that, while Eliza is able to alter the way she talks and therefore is perceived, Higgins is trapped by his own tongue and unable to change the way he speaks. He clearly develops some sort of feelings for Eliza – but is incapable of forming a caring relationship with her or anyone else because of this; his loneliness is palpable.
His is a tragic paradox – a master of language who can’t control his language – and I was surprised at how much I was moved by Rooney in the role.
Around the leads are more traditionally comic performances that lighten the mood. Taurian Teelucksingh makes a grand impression, especially musically, as Freddy, the cash-strapped upper-class man who falls for Eliza; David Alan Anderson is congenially guileless as Higgins’s pal Pickering; and Patty Jamieson gives a portrait of patience as Higgins’s long-suffering housekeeper Mrs. Pearce.
From the left, Kiera Sangster (Ensemble), Frank as Eliza Doolittle and Jacqueline Thair (Ensemble) perform in a scene from My Fair Lady.David Cooper/Shaw Festival
As for Eliza’s ne’er-do-well father Alfred P. Doolittle, David Adams doesn’t try to redeem or deepen this character who is constantly threatening physical violence – and just plays him straightforwardly as a singing Shavian contrarian.
Though missing the expected grand staircase, Lorenzo Savoini’s understated rock-musical style set with an elevated walkway eventually won me over with its elegant use of emptiness, aided by the emotive shadows and silhouettes conjured by lighting designer Mikael Kangas. The highlight of the costuming by Joyce Padua, meanwhile, is a terrific set of Ascot toppers that look designed by Frank Gehry.
A small parting suggestion: The Shaw Festival should program a singalong show or two for this very long run (to December!) as there were many audience members at a matinee this week who, like Higgins, couldn’t hold their tongues.