Eliza? - My Fair Lady Revival 2018 — Page 40

I honestly am not thrilled about this casting(besides Higgins and maybe Rigg?), but I don't know anything about Ambrose, so who knows maybe she'll be good.

Still, with revivals like The King And I and South Pacific, this revival seems to already pale in comparison. It still could be great, but I just have a feeling it won't be good.

It was a reaction to a tweet announcing the entire cast. That said, the quote was, "This is a disgrace. They turned @laurabenanti down for this?" Unless he was talking about Diana Rigg, who else could he be referring to when mentioning who they turned Laura Benanti down for? He definitely was referring to Ambrose as "this" and meant it disparagingly. Even if he meant "this" as the casting news, he's still expressing disappointment in the cast and calling the casting a "disgrace", which means the casting Ambrose, Rigg, Hadden-Paton, and Butz instead of Benanti is a "disgrace".

Updated On: 10/6/17 at 12:39 AM

ScottyDoesn'tKnow2 said: "It was a reaction to a tweet announcing the entire cast. That said, the quote was, "This is a disgrace. They turned @laurabenanti down for this?" Unless he was talking about Diana Rigg, who else could he be referring to when mentioning who they turned Laura Benanti down for? He definitely was referring to Ambrose as "this" and meant it disparagingly. Even if he meant "this" as the casting news, he's still expressing disappointment in the cast and calling the casting a "disgrace", which means the casting Ambrose, Rigg, Hadden-Paton, and Butz instead of Benanti is a "disgrace"."


Exactly.

GeorgeandDot said: "I must say that Sher probably will not cast a PoC. He tends to focus on historical accuracy and in the era of My Fair Lady, a PoC would not be an aristocrat. For some directors historical accuracy of this nature isn't necessary, but Sher tends to go for as authentic as possible. In fact I believe he even said that he was most likely going to cast a British actor as Higgins and was going to try to fill as many of the roles with English actors as he possibly could. It's just how he works. He doesn't really do non-traditional casting."

The problem with that is if you look at The King and I and South Pacific, Sher cast Japanese, Korean, Filipino actors as Siamese (i.e. Thai) and Hawiian and Chinese actors as Tonkinese people. Obviously, the homogenization of Asian peoples in casting is a problem that's been around for a while and is not unique to Sher (the original production of R&H's Flower Drum Song received this exact criticism, I believe), and I understand that this is a bit nit-picky and granular. It also gets kind of dicy saying that in the Edwardian Era a POC wouldn't be wealthy. Freddy is in the upper-middle class, as far as I remember. While there wasn't a massive black population in England at the time, there were still roughly 10,000 black British people living in the country, mostly around London. Of course it was rare for black Brits to become wealthy/move up the social ladder, but it wasn't impossible. Also, when we're looking at race in Britain, it becomes difficult to apply American understandings of race. Who we define as black/a POC can be radically different in the UK/Europe.

My point, I guess, is that justifying Sher's casting decisions through historical accuracy is flimsy. Beyond that, my general belief when it comes to historical, race-specific accuracy in Broadway shows is that if race doesn't play an integral role in the character/broader story, then there's no legitimate reason not to include POC in those productions. If you've got a show like Showboat, for example, casting a white Joe or a black Steve simply cannot work because the race of those two characters is a requirement for the story to make sense. The underlying social commentary in My Fair Lady is class, however, not race or racism, so I have trouble buying into the idea that it needs race-conscious casting decisions.

^I agree 100%, but I guess what I'm trying to say is that Sher isn't go to go out of his way to diversify his cast. He's telling a period story and he's known to make realistic casting decisions. We won't be seeing black 19th century aristocrats in this production a la The Great Comet. Some directors would, but Sher probably isn't going to.

Henry Higgins younger than Eliza? That's a "unique" take.

I think Pickering could be played by an Indian actor. Isn't he from India and studies Indian dialects?

Was Pickering from India, or did he just study dialects there? I don't remember if that's ever specified, although they could easily make it to where he's Indian if that's not something the script tells us one way or another.

perfectlymarvelous said: "Harriet Craig said: "perfectlymarvelous said: "I saw Diana Rigg in a truly awful production of Pygmalion in London 6 years ago but she was wonderful so I'm happy to see her tackle the role again."

I saw that production too, and I agree that Diana Rigg was wonderful (when is she not?). I don't remember much else about itexcept that Rupert Everett was way too dark as Higgins (more Dracula than Henry Higgins), so I'm just curious, perfectlymarvelous: why did you think it was "truly awful"?

By a curious coincidence, the day after seeing Pygmalion on that 2011 trip, I saw a Terence Rattigan play called Flare Path, in which Harry Hadden-Paton gave a wonderful performance as a terrified RAF pilot in WWII who (being English) can't bring himself to tell his wife how scared he is. Very different from Henry Higgins, but proof that he has the theatrical chops that make me look forward to seeing him as Higgins."

It was, if I remember correctly, very heavily edited and just didn't work at all. I also thought the direction was a complete misinterpretation of the play; they attempted to direct the whole thinglike a drawing room comedy and the only scene that worked was, in fact, the famous drawing room scene. I also thought the Eliza (a television actor whose name I'm forgetting) was incredibly weak with no presence at all, and Everett was horribly miscast and misdirected. It was all around misguided, with the exception of Dame Diana Rigg who can probably do no wrong."

I saw that production in Chichester before it went to London, so the cast was slightly different. I believe Kara Tointon (best known for being in Eastenders) did the London run, whilst I saw Honeysuckle Weeks. Diana Rigg was also absent from the version I saw.

I quite liked the production, other than the ending, but this was my first experience of anything My Fair Lady related on stage so it would have had to be pretty bad for me not to like it. Thinking back on it I would agree that it was a dark take on Higgins, particularly with the spiteful tone of the ending, but I still enjoyed the show overall and would have been interested to see him in the musical version.

I will still come and see the show, but I'm much less enthused following the casting. Hopefully it will still wow, but I'm going to hope for a West End revival.

James McMullan usually does a couple of different posters for the shows at LTC. I view this poster as the "I don't know who has been cast in the leads yet, so I'm going to give you a landscape" take. I bet there will be another design.

Although Higgins' biggest issue is a person's accent and pronunciation of the English language, I do think the society in which he and every other character in this show was brought up in was highly stratified by class, region, blood lineage, and thus race. I don't think we should pretend one's race wouldn't have prevented social mobility or even access/entry to many areas during these times, especially in a society where social mobilization was extremely difficult even compared to now due to the complex but understood social structure. Sure in the end Alfred Doolittle made money and had to join the middle class and thus he had to adopt his dreaded middle class morality, but he would never be considered a gentleman accepted by the aristocracy other than be entertainment or invited as a dinner guest once in a while as a novelty. That said, money does have a funny way of blurring those lines and if he had further issues, they could have slowly, through generations, infiltrate that society...probably through marriage.


Freddy, I thought, but could be wrong, belonged to the aristocracy where he may be rich in title (maybe land though doubtful) but not in money. He wasn't high up on the ladder, but I think he and his family could still hang on to their gentility as a way to show off some social power. Only certain people were afforded a lifestyle where they could have no real money but still be treated with the kind of respect to be invited among certain social groups and be invited to certain places. I think a POC could play him, but it has to be a clearly color-blind production where he's not the only POC.

Updated On: 10/6/17 at 09:25 AM