MY FAIR LADY (2018) Previews — Page 26

Those who are praising Sher for accurately transmitting Shaw's messages on class and middle class morality in the UK I think do not know a great deal about Shaw. He was a one-trick pony. One of the characters in the play, as a stand-in for Shaw, criticizes or satirizes British middle class beliefs on many matters to his middle class audiences.

In Mrs. Warren's Profession it is the defense of the morality of prostitution by the former prostitute now Madam. In Major Barbara, it is the owner of the munitions company defending the morality of arms makers who were putting a lot of the lower class to work. Is it inconsistent to defend prostitutes and munitions companies? Probably, but this did not matter to Shaw as long as he had a subject with which to tweak his audiences' nose. He had a queer assortment of opinions: in favor of eugenics and opposed to vaccination.

It was between wars that Shaw began a romance with dictatorship as the best government. A benevolent dictatorship. Thus he hailed the accession to power of Mussolini in 1922 as "the right kind of tyrant". Shaw leaned more to the left than to the right, but still found Hitler, at the time of his succession to power in Germany in January 1933, to be "a very remarkable man, a very able man", and professed himself proud to be the only writer in England who was "scrupulously polite and just to Hitler".

But it was Stalin on whom Shaw really had a crush. He journeyed to the Soviet Union in 1931 and had a lengthy meeting with Stalin, whom Shaw later described as "a Georgian gentleman" with no malice in him. At a dinner given in his honor, Shaw told the gathering: "I have seen all the 'terrors' and I was terribly pleased by them". Of course this was five years before the Great Purge when Stalin had 750,000 to 1.5 million murdered. Shaw's kept a framed picture of Stalin until his death, and this was long after Stalin had been revealed for what he was.

Why would anyone be interested in the moral instruction of this educated but vain, ignorant and gullible man? Deceived much more easily than Chamberlain and willing to see what he wanted to see and believe what he wanted to believe.

There are much worse indictments of Shaw in videos of speeches and talks that he gave. In one he bemoans the useless members of society and how to handle them, but these are too heinous to be attributed to him without absolute proof of origin.

Saw it from third row yesterday- loved it though my sister called it old fashioned and old farty. She loved Take Me To The Church best of all musical numbers- that was my least favorite- and I thought it really did not fit into this production. The revolving set was really effective- and first class. The cast was good- the music great- the Ascot scene wonderful- the ending fantasy sequence really perfect for these times. Higgins lost the girl- and Freddy got her. I would go for Freddy myself. He was handsome and a good catch- though he will not make much of a living- true. Anyway- Ambrose good and I liked that she was not a youngster- ti added depth to her character.

I can see Lauren Ambrose giving a polarizing performance. People either love her toned down, yearning, wounded Eliza or they prefer their Eliza's feisty and more energetic, which I find more typical since most Elizas cast are really young and play up her energy and the comedy. Ambrose is playing an Eliza who seems to have lived through some stuff even at her young age.

In that NYTimes feature, it does say, "[Ambrose] knows that Eliza can come across as merely sassy, spunky, cute. She knows that the ending can seem like a surrender, not a meeting of equals. She won’t let that happen." So it seems deliberate that she toned down that aspect of Eliza that has become the WAY to play her. I thought Audrey Hepburn played an introverted Eliza, but Ambrose plays her even more so. From the rehearsal footage, I thought Ambrose was going to play the post-Ball scene in a much angrier way than she actually did which fit the tone of her performance beforehand. However, I think Ambrose has it in her to explode during that scene and I think they should give a few performances where she does just to see how it plays.

I thought her singing was more-than-fine and exhilarating at the end of "I Could Have Danced All Night". I heard so many soaring sopranos singing the score where I felt they concentrated on selling their voice rather than interpreting it, and I think Ambrose is able to hit the notes but really get to the heart of the songs. The way she sings the score actually makes me seriously look forward to this cast recording. I loved her "Show Me" and I loved parts of "Without You" but I do think she could let it rip a bit in "Without You" and show a bit more attitude like with the "duckie" line. I also don't blame Ambrose if there is some wandering around aimlessly at the stage. I sort of found that distracting too because Ambrose does a great job getting into the Eliza she and Sher have come up with that her circling and singing to the audience sort of takes me out of the character and goes into singer mode rather than integrating the book, character, and songs together. I'd put more "blame" on Sher's directing and blocking for her. Maybe it was a directorial choice where the spotlight was supposed to be on Eliza and she's singing out away from Higgins and the other characters because she's going to move beyond them by the end.

Updated On: 4/2/18 at 09:40 AM

We saw the show this past Friday. I loved it.

The person I was with picked up on a couple little things that bothered her that I didn’t even notice. She said that it annoyed her that a handkerchief was thrown in a trash can in Higgins’ house and it sat there in the trash can the entire show. With a large house keeping staff and the show taking place over a period of many months, my show mate felt the handkerchief should have been removed. Why would Higgins’ maids and butlers leave trash in the trash can for months at a time. Like I said, I didn’t notice. My companion also was annoyed that the fake flowers the flower girls were selling still had little price stickers on their fake stems, nobody had bothered to remove the stickers. Again, I didn’t notice if this was true myself.

I am a huge Game of Thrones fan. I basically function mentally about 40% on earth and 60% in Westeros. I didn’t know Diana Rigg (the Queen of Thornes/Lady Terrell of Highgarden and a lifetime actress with many dozens of theatre, tv and movie credits including a Tony for Medea) was in MFL. When she appeared on stage my eyes grew wide and I had a bit of a melt down.

We were standing outside the theatre along W 65th right after the show let out, and she came strolling by with another actress. I said some incredibly awkward and nerdy things to her .... she kept walking but she turned around and smiled .... it was awesome. Now I have a crush on a 79 year old woman.

Updated On: 4/4/18 at 05:22 PM

Someone in a Tree2 said: "Incidentally, it's always bugged me that all Elizas the world over sing "I Could Have Danced All Night" in the Queen's English. Shouldn't she relax into her own speech pattern after suffering through the lessons all night? Who on earth is she delivering those proper vowelsforat 3 in the morning?"

I think that the point -- or part of the point -- is that it isn't her own speech pattern any longer. She's had a breakthrough and left it behind her. Of course it's not realistic that she does it all at once, and so completely -- but, well, it's a musical.

Someone in a Tree2 said: "Thanks for that, Henrik. Perhaps it's time tohear from someone else who's actually seen this production.

Watching the show last night from the center loge, for the most part I was absolutelyenchanted. I've always considered MFL the greatest of all golden age musical plays, despite having never seen a Broadway mounting that actually worked for me (going back to the revival in 1976). There was no major revisal here-- Bart Sher's essential choice was to focus on Eliza's story front and center. That's the whole point. Never look away from her, never miss the impact of how someone else's speech might affect her. And when she makes the choice she does at the end, that choice is truly earned. Frankly Lauren Ambrose was a revelation to me-- a translucent actress with a lovely soprano (and yes, anodd way of standing when singing thosehigh notes), who had the skill to make Eliza's journey heartbreakingly real. Sheisthe reason to see this mounting, hands down.

Harry Hadden-Paton is young and vibrant and a commanding singer, and never really broke the mold set forth by Rex Harrison 60 years ago. In this staging,hewasn't meant to. Jordan Donica was a sparkling, ravishingly beautiful Freddy-- the best I've ever seen. Sorry to say, Leo Butz is the one weak link in the cast, never mastering either the accent nor the contagious glee with which Alfred seizes life's chances.

The set designs are often ravishing, but always very traditional, which was a surprise given what MichaelYeargen is capable of. He showed something magical in the St Paul's Exterior and in the Exterior Higgins House where the false perspective facades aresliced off at the ends in a fresh way. I would have adored an entire production designed just that way. And was it budget cuts that left the Ascot Gavotte just one sad striped awning on an empty stage?

The Catherine Zuber costumes gave melife, as expected. They are thrilling ideas of the period that side step every choice ol'Cecil Beaton made with the originals. Eliza's ballgown is absolutely to die for-- though weirdly most ofher other ensembles were the only minor missteps in the amazingparade.

The show, let's face it, is a little long, particularly since they've interpolated line after line from Lerner's film screenplay. (Anyone who only knows the published play script by heart will be surprised by any number of addedbeats, including Eliza's introduction to a steam shower in scene 3!!) So, with apologies to Chris Gattelli, here is a list of cutsI'd propose forthwith: in Act 1, lose a verse and chorus in the "Loverly" dance break. Lose a verse in the "Bit 'o Luck" reprise dance break. Lose all those added measures in "Poor Professor Higgins" while we waited for the turntable to finish rotating. In Act 2, cutallthat needless Ballroom dancing before the dialogue begins. Most of all, please God cut the 5 minutes of Can-Can and Drag Actsstraight out of La Cage aux Folles that absolutely destroyed"Get me To theChurch On Time"! What on earth do ugly men in boxers, corsets and wigs have to do with Eliza Dolittle's story? Lerner and Loewe would be horrified by that whole sequence and Bart clearly lost his mind in conceiving it. The show rights itself soon enough ("A Hymn to Him" is absolutely delicious), and "Without You" is the best singing Lauren does all night.

M A J O R S P O I L E R A L E R T



Which brings us to the final scene. I loved the touch to the face. I loved the choice to leave. But why oh why did Eliza enter the scene through the study doors and exit through the fourth wall??? Was she a vision of Higgins' imagination? Did she really come back in the flesh? A simple blocking fix would immediately make Bart's intention crystal clear. My honey and Iwere on our feet in an instant for the well-earned standing ovation this show deserved, but we argued about that beat the whole way home.



Thank God!! I thought I was the only one who felt like she walked through a wall. I thought I had flipped the channel to an episode of Bewitched featuring Aunt Clara.

King and I was a better production in which all the elements complimented one another with some star turns. This will get favorable write ups but they will not be over the moon. Tony's will be earned but in part due to a lack of competition.




"

What’s with the assumption that a woman should choose someone who’s not “lower” than her to have an “interesting” life? I find it utterly flummoxing.

Updated On: 4/3/18 at 03:03 AM

OlBlueEyes said: "Those who are praising Sher for accurately transmitting Shaw's messages on class and middle class morality in the UK I think do not know a great deal about Shaw. He was a one-trick pony. One of the characters in the play, as a stand-in for Shaw, criticizes or satirizes British middle class beliefs on many matters to his middle class audiences.

In Mrs. Warren's Professionit is the defense of the morality of prostitution by the former prostitute now Madam. In Major Barbara, it is the owner of the munitions company defending the morality of arms makers who were putting a lot of the lower class to work. Is it inconsistent to defend prostitutes and munitions companies? Probably, but this did not matter to Shaw as long as he had a subject with which to tweak his audiences' nose. He had a queer assortment of opinions: in favor of eugenics and opposed to vaccination.

It was between wars that Shaw began a romance with dictatorship as the best government. A benevolent dictatorship. Thus he hailed the accession to power of Mussoliniin 1922 as"the right kind of tyrant". Shaw leaned more to the left than to the right, but still found Hitler, at the time of his succession to power in Germany in January 1933, to be"a very remarkable man, a very able man", and professed himself proud to be the only writer in England who was "scrupulously polite and just to Hitler".

But it was Stalin on whom Shaw really had a crush. He journeyed to the Soviet Union in 1931 and had a lengthy meeting with Stalin,whom Shaw later described as "a Georgian gentleman" with no malice in him. At a dinner given in his honor, Shaw told the gathering: "I have seen all the 'terrors' and I was terribly pleased by them". Of course this was five years before the Great Purge when Stalin had 750,000 to 1.5 million murdered. Shaw's kept aframed picture of Stalin until his death, and this was long after Stalin had been revealed for what he was.

Why would anyone be interested in the moral instruction of this educated but vain, ignorant and gullible man? Deceived muchmore easily than Chamberlain and willing to see what he wanted to see and believe what he wanted to believe.

There are much worse indictments of Shaw in videos of speeches and talks that he gave. In one he bemoans the useless members of society and how to handle them, but these are too heinous to be attributed to him without absolute proof of origin."

pro tip: most people's eyes glaze over after the first 2 sentences

MCfan2 said: "Dancingthrulife2 said: "What’s with the assumption that a woman should choose someone who’s not “lower” than her to have an “interesting” life? I find it utterly flummoxing."

Intellectually. Freddy is beneath her intellectually. That's not to take anything away from him as a person; he's friendly and good-natured and he can't help not being bright. But I honestly believe he would end up boringEliza to death."

Hmm one of the things about Freddy in this revival is that Jordan Donica has maybe the loveliest voice of anyone in the production but his line readings were very stiff and so as a result Freddy comes across as rather priggish and arrogant rather than the sweet sap. Now I saw this early in previews and maybe he will get more comfortable with the lines. I have a ticket April 10 and can't wait to see how the actors have grown (or not grown) into their roles. But Donica definitely IMO needed the most work acting-wise.

We are seeing this Friday night for the first time. Neither of us have seen the show or the film, so going in with completely fresh eyes and ears. We are sitting in row E of the Loge (near center). How is the sound and view?

OlBlueEyes said: "henrikegerman said: "Olblueeyes, the themes of Pygmalionremain the themes of Pygmalionregardless of any moral and political objections to or even outrage toward Shaw.

How do any ofyour arguments about Shaw'spolitical viewschange the fact that he wrote a play in which two characters are being groomed by a third to come out of dire povertyand into middle class respectability, with each facing uniquechallenges as to how to personallyfit into societyand navigating acollisionbetween their ownself-actualization andmiddle class values and expectations?"

I don't want to interrupt the discussion of the musical, which I myself found to be "memorable," but I find it incorrect to ascribe to Shaw some great insight into class and morality in Victorian England through the actions and choices made by the eccentric characters he created for the play. Not many of the lower class women of the era had the spunk and intelligence of Eliza, and scarcely any of these had the fortune of encountering a Higgins. It is to Shaw's credit that he created characters for this comedy which resonated with his audience. You write 600 plays during your life and you should have a few that outlive you.

But I don't see anything heroic about Shaw's insistence that Eliza cut off Higgins entirely at the end, especially if she chose Shaw's option to run a flower shop with Freddy. Eliza in "Show Me" I believe established that he was beneath her, and she might have had a much more interesting life with the humbled (and much younger than the Rex Harrison we remember) Higgins."

Fine and good, but what does ascribing or not ascribing heroism to Shaw's intentions have to do with our interpretations of the play he wrote? This isn't about endorsing or embracing Shaw's themes and ideas (in general, politically, on some controversial, even alarming, occasions, or even in the play itself). One is free to relate to Shaw's ideas or theories or reject them, just as with any other writer or idealist-theorist of any sort.

It has to do with being attuned to the themes and ideas presented in a work. Of identifying those ideas and themes so that they can be appreciated or rejected (or anything in between), discussed both in terms of their value and in terms of how well the work conveys them.

And certainly Shaw, of all modern playwrights, had strong themes and marked ideas.

Also, how does a woman wanting a man to "show" her his feelings for her rather than speak of them (the throughline of "Show Me" - which btw is a rather topically controversial one (given our sensitivities to men committing amorous/romantic/sexual acts when there is no wish by the woman for him to do so - particularly in the context of two people, such as Eliza and Freddy, who hardly know each other and have only met briefly... and she wants him to be physically demonstrative without speaking of his feelings and hearing her response... hmmm -

how does anything about "Show Me" suggest that the man is beneath the woman? Because he isn't physically or sexually assertive enough - that somehow makes him unsuitable or a lesser person? And your take on this is all the more unclear to me given that Freddy's being all talk and no "moves," doesn't contrast him with Higgins. In fact, Eliza makes it very clear that her lament in "Show Me" is not directed only at Freddy's behavior in this regard. To the contrary, she equates Freddy's behavior with Higgins' own ("I get words all day through, first from him now from you"...

And who do we think is most in Eliza's mind during this song?
The man who is dominating her life and whom she has just had the cojones to escape.... or the dear boy she hardly knows who she happens upon coming out of the house?
hint: that's a rhetorical question.

Once could even make the argument that what "Show Me" is about is Eliza's romantic frustration with Higgins brilliantly disguised as her romantic frustration with Freddy. Both Pygmalion and My Fair Lady leave much unsaid about the just beneath the surface romance between the two principals but both have enough there in subtext and passionate discussion of their possibly marrying and Higgins abandonment issues when Eliza leaves for the question of their having strong feelings for each other (tinged with dominance, submission, codependence, but also with them finally having met their match, intellectually and passionately and not taking any of what they consider crap from each other) and quite possibly an intense attachment of the heart to be inescapable.

Not to mention that "Show Me" is Lerner, not Shaw. In Pygmalion, as far as I recall there is no parallel scene in Shaw's play where Eliza laments that Freddy isn't being assertive enough romantically and is only wooing her with words.

Updated On: 4/3/18 at 10:50 AM

Someone in a Tree2 said: "
I've promised myself to get a seat downstairs (even on the sides) the next time I'm back in NY."

I sat on the side in seat C505 and it was indeed a terrific view.