MY FAIR LADY (Jay Records, CDJAY2 1277).
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
The musical version of George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion, which became My Fair Lady, is arguably the most popular and most successful musical show of the 20th century. With music by Frederick Loewe and a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, it has proved to be an everlasting draw for audiences around the world.
Since its premiere in New York in 1956 it has had regular revivals on Broadway and the West End and has had umpteen tours for the past 60 years or more. It was and still is a resounding hit wherever it has played. It won six Tony Awards for the original production, and the film version was voted Best Picture in the Academy Awards in 1964. Quite simply, it is an unstoppable and glorious piece of musical theatre.
Everything about it is perfect. It has a strong story that is both comical and in a way serious too. It centres around Henry Higgins, a professor of phonetics, who happens across Eliza Doolittle, a poor flowerseller on the streets of Covent Garden and, so horrified by the girl’s appalling Cockney accent, makes a bet with a fellow language expert, Colonel Pickering, that he can turn the girl into a society lady by merely teaching her how to speak properly and pass her off at Ascot and at an Embassy ball. However, Eliza has her own aspirations to be an assistant in a florist’s shop, so she joins Higgins and Pickering for elocution classes.
The plot is typical of Shaw’s writing in that, even though Pygmalion was a comedy it also had a serious point of view to make about the English and their hideous accents. It was difficult at first for Lerner and Loewe to adapt the piece for a musical. The play had already been filmed several times, although the most famous one was the 1935 film with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. Without a main love story, no subplot or secondary love story and there was no place for the usual musical ensemble. All that had to be invented. Anyway, Lerner and Loewe’s inspiration rose to the fore and they produced an absolutely perfect show.
The Jay Records CD which, incidentally won the Gramophone magazine’s award for Best Musical Theatre, is welcome as a more or less complete record of the show. Not only does it contain all the songs and incidental music for the dance ensembles, but it also has a bonus track of ‘Come to the Ball’, a song much liked by Lerner himself, that was cut from the show out of town before the original production hit Broadway.
John Owen Edwards conducts the National Symphony Orchestra and they produce a terrific sound, sharp and blazing with life, while the 20-strong chorus sings up a storm that in any theatre would bring the house down. Alec McCowen had already played Higgins before in the 1974 London production of Pygmalion with Diana Rigg as Eliza at the Albery Theatre.
Here McCowen plays Higgins as if to the manner born in his own insouciant way. He has a better singing voice than Rex Harrison although Harrison made the part his own by his very attractive way of singing it in parlando style which is more akin to talking in time to the music. The result made the lyrics sound more like conversation. McCowen attacks a number like ‘Why Can’t the English?’ with great anger and force but then calms down vocally for ‘I’m An Ordinary Man’ a misnomer indeed, as the character is far from ordinary. Later on he softens when he admits that ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face’ and here McCowen evokes the sad man that Higgins really is.
Soprano Tinuke Olafimihan, who can also be heard on other Jay Records albums including On the Town,West Side Story and The King and I etc, has a beautifully lyrical voice and she sings ‘Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?’, ‘Just You Wait’ and ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ with enormous passion and attack.
As Eliza’s father, Alfred Doolittle, Bob Hoskins, who was also in the 1974 Pygmalion with McCowen, takes a leaf out of Stanley Holloway’s book, the original musical Doolittle, and does energetic, knees-up performances of ‘With a Little Bit of Luck’ and ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’. As Freddy Eynsford-Hill, Eliza’s potential suitor, Henry Wickham gives ‘On the Street Where You Live’ a fine and polished performance.
The recording is enhanced by the presence of husband and wife team, Michael Denison as Pickering and Dulcie Gray as Mrs Higgins, Henry’s mother. The rest of the cast includes Diane Langton, Barrie James, Michael Bauer and Jill Pert etc.
All in all this is a sumptuous recording enhanced by the use of Dolby Surround Sound. Congratulations should go to recording engineer John Kurlander and the digital editing at Finesplice Studios, for producing such clarity in this superb recording. Full marks too to Rex Bunnett for his comprehensive liner notes.
Michael Darvell
SHARE THIS POST:
Comments are closed.