Sylvia Toh Catches My Fair Lady and You Should Too

 

Wouldn’t It Be Luverly…if the woman in the seat in front of me had a shorter neck and smaller hair? That crease in the crinoline aside, My Fair Lady the musical, now resounding through the rows at the Marina Bay Sands Theatre, is, to quote the late great New York critic Walter Kerr, “Witty, wise, winning.”

The Broadway production originated in 1956 and has been regularly produced, some dozen times since. That should be endorsement enough for you to go catch it before its run here ends in March. The musical – and later film – My Fair Lady is based on George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion (in which an artist falls in love with his creation).

In Edwardian London, a cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, draws the attention of a phoneticist Professor Henry Higgins, and linguist Colonel Hugh Pickering. The gentlemen bet that within six months Higgins can train and transform Eliza to pass as a duchess at an embassy ball. Of course the bet pays off, but not before the audience is treated to at least 10 eminently hummable singable whistlable songs. From Why Can’t A Woman Be Like A Man to I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face. Every refrain intelligent and melodious, soaringly infectious. And sparingly peopled with a half dozen interacting characters. Of which, the mould was truly irreparably broken after the late great Rex Harrison’s Henry Higgins. His is the toughest act to follow, but on the Marina Bay Sands Sands theatre stage, Alfred P Doolittle (Eliza’s dustman father) mopped up the rest with his show-stopping performances. The Colonel earned his acting chops too, but undoubtedly the twin stars of My Fair Lady are the story and the musical numbers (Award-winning Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe),

I could hardly contain my bathroom voice as I sang along. I am certain I heard the man in the seat behind me go, Wouldn’t It Be Luverly if she shut up…