Dame Vanessa Redgrave as Mrs Higgins and Amara Okereke as Eliza Doolittle
(Picture: Marc Brenner)An Eliza Doolittle for a new generation, Amara Okereke absolutely smashes it in Bartlett Sher’s joyful staging, here after a triumphant run in New York, of the classic 1956 Lerner and Loewe musical. The first black actress to play the role, the 25-year-old has an effortlessly clear, full and expressive singing voice and can be meltingly soft, blazingly furious and beautifully still. She owns the Coliseum stage, and the role.
As Henry Higgins, the phonetics professor who bets he can pass a cockney flowergirl off as a Duchess, Downton star Harry Hadden-Paton has a manic edge. He is slightly more age-appropriate than is usual, recalibrating the couple’s combative romance. I thought I detected hints that this Higgins is gay but repressed, fascinated and frightened by Eliza (my wife told me I was imagining it).
