A scene from My Fair Lady at the Kilworth House Theatre
Playing at the Kilworth House Theatre, near Lutterworth, Leicestershire until 14th July.
Mitch Sebastian’s memorable staging of My Fair Lady is as well-chiselled as the astutely and beautifully designed environment of the Kilworth House Theatre in which the musical is performed, from the fine vocals of the cast to Cornelius Clarke’s black-smeared dustman, Alfred Doolittle, an old hack out of Ealing cinema, always an original and in no way a clone of Stanley Holloway. Clarke’s ‘With A Little Bit of Luck’ emerges even better at the reprise. His ‘Get Me to the Church On Time’ is the evening’s hottest number.
Designer Libby Watson furnishes a brilliant red/pink brick-like set with an upper half splitting open to reveal a smoky study. There carouse Hugh Osborne’s Colonel Pickering, a Dr Watson type – loyal as a puppy, with a good voice and a nice eye for the ladies – and the likeable, wickedly contradictory Henry Higgins (Mark Inscoe). The latter also enunciates superbly during ‘A Hymn to Him’ while barking orders to the long-suffering Mrs Pearce (Gay Soper).
Eliza (Helena Blackman) is a mite unconvincing in the opening street scene (even the Cockney ‘Wouldn’t It Be Loverly’ suffers). All in the lithe ensemble look well directed, except her.
But later on Blackman is splendid and her singing voice and top register (terrific high notes) soon blossom. ‘Just you Wait’ is a treat, her performance soaring in parallel with her posh accent, and ‘The Rain In Spain’ is uproariously funny. Easily, though, the actress’ most brilliantly polished number is the duet with Tom Sterling’s Freddy (‘Show Me’).
Garth Hall’s snappy ten-strong band shines during ‘You Did it’, though one or two numbers could be treated with a little more classical delicacy and the strings too rarely show through.
The stage ensemble is superb. Moves, cameos and vignettes are all joyously relevant and keenly directed: a wandering drunk (Nic Greenshields) in Alfred’s Falstaffian entourage, Ian Gareth Jones (the Tottenham Court Road pub’s bartender), Joseph Houston’s irritating Carpathian princeling, along with an hilarious (and gorgeously white-clad) imaginary horse race, demure maids, exquisitely sung servants’ chorus and a fabulously choreographed waiters’ ensemble for Lerner and Loewe’s ‘Ascot Gavotte’ all prove pure joy.
Arguably best acted of all is Rosamund Shelley’s Mrs Higgins. How well mothers know their petulant sons and their foibles, even when they are well past 30.
Kilworth House Theatre’s special atmosphere makes both performing and watching a unique pleasure. This well-canopied outdoor venue, described by The Daily Telegraph as ‘perhaps the best-kept secret in British theatre’, was erected near Lutterworth, Leicestershire, in the grounds of a late 19th century Italianate country house converted into a hotel, by entrepreneurs Celia and Richard Mackay. Every aspect is beautifully designed – from the huts, walkways and bridges to the auditorium with its splendid sightlines. It reveals ingenuity, flair and a marvellous eye for consistency and fine detail, a delicious marriage of the polished professional and delightfully informal.
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