I can count on one hand how many musicals I really like and this 1956 classic about the Cockney flower seller who becomes a lady creeps in there, wrapped up in a rosy glow of nostalgia.
I put it down to the fact I was in a school production of it more years ago than I care to remember and learned the lyrics of practically every song, despite being consigned to the back row of the chorus. I could have stepped in to any character's role at a moment's notice had they asked, which they didn't.
Since then I've seen the Oscar-winning 1964 film version starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison but that's it, yet even now I can sing along to everything from Eliza Doolittle's Wouldn’t It Be Loverly yearnings for a better life to her boozer dad's need to Get Me To The Church on Time. And I was already humming them under my breath in Sunderland Empire before the live orchestra struck the first note at this epic production of the Lerner & Loewe musical.
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I say epic because this award-winning show, directed by Bartlett Sher and now on a UK tour after a hit run at London Coliseum, is huge in scale, ambition and talent - and it lasts for three hours, actually a little over on the night I went along. That does include the interval which gives us all a breather but it's mighty long.
Even so, it doesn't drag. While there was a bit of seat shuffling towards the very end, the first half in particular moves at cracking pace and we're soon caught up in a whirl of colour and fun as the famous story, based upon George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, sees phonetics expert Professor Henry Higgins - here played by West End star Michael D. Xavier - in cahoots with fellow toff Colonel Pickering (former Emmerdale actor John Middleton) as he sets out to give elocution lessons to street flower seller Eliza and pass her off as a 'lady'.
And so we watch the so-called "guttersnipe", played by Charlotte Kennedy who recently performed as Cosette in Les Miserables, change before our eyes and Kennedy wrings humour from every drawn-out vowel when her transformed Eliza is first introduced to polite society.
This Ascot Gavotte raceday scene - which is where Eliza meets the lovelorn Freddy (played by Tom Liggins, who goes to soar in the song On the Street Where You Live ) - is one of my favourites and here it's a sea of beautiful costumes, all silvery pinks and pastels, clipped accents and restrained movement - a total contrast to the raucous second act stag do of Eliza's dad.
Playing the pub-loving, work-shirking Alfred P. Doolittle is Adam Woodyatt - best known as EastEnders' Ian Beale - who apparently is back in musical theatre for the first time since 1980 and he's making a cracking job of it: his highlight being Get Me To The Church On Time which sees him singing, dancing, cavorting around and climbing on tables.
The pub set switches around to become a street scene and the moving of scenery frequently becomes part of the action, immersed in the busy streetscapes. The main set design is ingenious: the interior of a two-level house which revolves to show different rooms, the characters opening doors and moving from one to the next as it does so.
Of course, the musical is very much of its time and out of step with ours, with Higgins' criticism and bullying of Eliza standing out in a way I oddly don't remember noticing back in my schooldays. And the whole idea of having to lose your accent to knock off a few rough edges and improve yourself doesn't sit well nowadays.
And yet. It's all so beautifully done. Michael D. Xavier takes the edge off Higgins' sharp words with humour wherever he can and makes his self-assured teacher just a little less certain and more hesitant in the scene when he meets with the disillusioned Eliza again after she flees his house.
The end, however, is left open, with no long-term reunion implied. Times have changed after all.
The musical looks spectacular and the singing is faultless, as you'd expect from a cast of such calibre, which includes opera singer and soprano star Lesley Garrett in the lovely role as housekeeper Mrs Pearce whose unrattled nature we are amused to see finally shows wear in giveaway glances and little signs of lost patience.
All cast deserve a mention, including the ensemble chorus. If there was a best actor award for investing the most feeling into just one line it would surely go to Higgins' butler whose brief announcement of the arrival of Eliza's dustbin man dad at the household drips with disgust.
It might all be about as far removed from a school show as you can get but this production, not afraid to remain true to the original, has reinforced my happy memories of it. If you have old favourites then this is how you'd like them treated.
For tickets to the Sunderland run, which ends on February 11, see here.
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