My Fair Lady is a classic story with well-known songs. It’s been on tour in 2022 and 2023, with a new cast but still retaining all of the original charm. Here’s my My Fair Lady theatre review.
Overview of My Fair Lady
My Fair Lady is quite a well known musical, thanks in part to the famous film that brought the music and storyline to a wider audience. This My Fair Lady theatre review is of the touring production in 2022 and 2023. However, it was a classic interpretation of My Fair Lady, so not very different from the film or previous theatre productions.
My Fair Lady follows the story of Eliza Doolittle as she becomes a lady. At the start of the show, she speaks in a rough Cockney accent, and is laughed at by Henry Higgins, a phonetician who teaches speech. It’s near the beginning of the show that we hear the song ‘Wouldn’t it be Loverly’, in Eliza’s charming cockney accent.
Eliza then takes up lessons with Henry Higgins to learn to speak like a lady. This is where the song ‘The Rain in Spain’ comes in. At first she struggles with the lessons, but after a while she learns how to speak like a lady. And when she gets it right, she ‘could have danced all night’. I’m sure most people will recognise that famous song!
Eliza is taken to posh events to show she can be a ‘proper lady’. She gains an admirer at one of these events too. However, Eliza becomes upset when Henry Higgins tries to take all the credit for her improvement. She leaves, and goes home to find her father about to get married – cue the song ‘Get me to the Church on Time’. However, after several more arguments, Eliza does end up going back to Henry Higgins.
What I liked about My Fair Lady
This show was really nice to watch. It’s a lovely story, a classic ‘rags to riches’ fairytale kind of story. I enjoyed all the songs, especially the familiar ones that the whole audience seemed to know well.
This production of My Fair Lady was classic. It didn’t try to put a modern twist on any parts of it, which I liked. I think that when a story and set of songs works so well, it’s nice to see a classic version that isn’t too different. I think the audience appreciated that as well – there were a lot of older people in the audience, and I heard them commenting afterwards how much they had enjoyed it. But there were many younger people in the audience too, enjoying seeing My Fair Lady for the first time.
What I wasn’t so sure about
Although I enjoyed the show, I didn’t absolutely love it. I found it quite long – well over 3 hours with the interval. And I kept thinking it was about to end, and then there would be another scene. I don’t mind long shows, as long as there’s enough plot to justify it going on for that long. But in My Fair Lady, it felt like the final plot point went on for a bit too long. I think some of it could have been cut. A lot of the audience we quite fidgety towards the end!
This show advertised Lesley Garret as one of the star cast. I’d actually heard of Lesley Garret as quite a famous opera singer, so I was looking forward to seeing her. However, she played the part of the housekeeper, who didn’t really have any songs. I think she only sang about three lines in the whole show. Those three lines were great, but I would have liked her to have sung a lot more because she was so good. It felt a bit weird to cast a famous opera singer in a non-singing part. To be honest, there weren’t really any singing parts for an older woman in this show – but maybe they could have adapted some of the songs to give her some more time singing, as she was so good.
My final issue with this show was that the ending wasn’t overly clear about Eliza’s and Henry’s relationship. I was left slightly confused about what type of relationship they were meant to have. I couldn’t quite work out if the show was aiming to portray a father/daughter relationship, or a romantic relationship. And that’s not an ideal thing to be confused about! I’m sure they could have made that just a bit clearer to help avoid confusion.
Would I recommend My Fair Lady
I’d definitely recommend going to see My Fair Lady. Despite my few reservations in my My Fair Lady theatre review, I did enjoy the show. It was a nice evening out at the theatre. And it was nice to see such a famous show on stage. I definitely wouldn’t say it was my favourite thing I’ve seen this year, but it was still perfectly ‘loverly’. Check out the touring dates here.