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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Arifa Akbar

My Fair Lady review – perfectly elegant, ever so sedate

Eliza Doolittle Henry Higgins Amara Okereke Marc Brenner Alan Jay Lerner Frederick Loewe Harry HaddenPaton Vanessa Redgrave
Ding-dong, the bells are going to chime … Stephen K Amos heads up the party in My Fair Lady.
Ding-dong, the bells are going to chime … Stephen K Amos heads up the party in My Fair Lady. Photograph: Marc Brenner

This garlanded production of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s musical, fresh from Broadway, is the definition of a comforting night out at the theatre. It glides from one well-loved song to the next on an elegantly twirling set designed by Michael Yeargan.

Amara Okereke, as Eliza Doolittle, has a voice that fills the auditorium. It is a thrill to see Vanessa Redgrave as Henry Higgins’s mother – even if she is gone in the blink of an eye. Higgins (Harry Hadden-Paton) himself is a foppish mashup of several Very English Types, from Colin Firth to Doctor Who – slightly bumbling and not nearly as patrician or haughty as Rex Harrison in the 1964 film.

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