Book and Lyrics Alan Jay Lerner
Music: Frederick Loewe
Director: Bartlett Sher
In Greek mythology, master sculptor Pygmalion carves perfection of the female form in ivory. Naming her Galatea, he worships her beauty. Goddess Venus, so moved by this devotion (and a self-indulgent frisson of flattery), bestows mortality on her. A daughter comes along whom they name Pathos. She lends her name to the location dedicated to the goddess of Love. Nearby, the cockleshell heroine, Aphrodite, rises from the waves.
Bernard Shaw’s eponymous ‘humane comedy’ explores issues of class and required pronunciation as a pithy vehicle for his social(ist) satire on affected middle-class moralities. Loewe and Lerner decided to jazz it up a little with as pithy a libretto, dialogue and lyrics this evening’s audience could ever wish for and are deliciously reminded just how many songs they have forgotten belonged to this outrageously extravagant adaptation. By George – they soon get it.
Michael Yeargan’s swirling, double-down, and then some, set designs rotate, gestate and vibrate with dynamic fluidity. The Piranesi Classical forced-perspective structures lend further, atmospheric depth. There might even be naughty nuance of Disney’s Mary Poppins, Feed The Birds 2p A Bag homage.
The library spiral staircases a suggestive DNA double-helix of Professor Higgin’s inner bachelor turmoil. Or maybe not. There’s a panoply of coming and goings set-shifting paraphernalia enough to make the eyes giddy in wonder. To be awed, or not to be, is not even worth the question.
Then there’s Rebekah Lowings’ (tonight’s understudy – understudy – what?) Eliza. Lowly Cockney flower-girl chrysalis pupates, with delicious, irony and butterfly timing, in the Ascot Gavotte where she encourages the racing favourite, ‘Dover’, to shift his blooming arse to glorious auditorium galloping sound effects. Put simply: Rebekah Lowings, begat of Cockney-gal Galatea, is a beguiling ivory madonna to behold.
This is a monstrously delicious meringue, have your three-tier cake and scoff the lot, production and director Bartlett Sher might be righteously please with all concerned – it damn near patents panache. With more preening verve than Richard Ashcroft in a hall of infinite mirrors, and costumes by Catherine Zuber so feather tickle-teasing voluptuous, even Heaven’s angels must be feeling naked. No wonder London Bridge is feeling structurally compromised.
Michael D. Xavier’s Higgins wears the quintessential detective-style tweed trench coat: whilst not conclusive, it is highly suggestive of his 221B Baker Street misanthropic, savant’s inspiration. An obsession with cutting-edge gadgetry and his borderline gynophobia lend supplemental evidence.
Adam Woodyatt transitions comfortably from ‘The Square’ to the sound of Bow Bells riffing comfortably on the rascally amoral rationality of one Mr Alfred P. Dolittle. His Get Me To The Church On Timeensemble endeavours to surpass itself with Cockney burlesque, rebellious mayhem.
Miss this show and even The Pope would be pushed to forgive you.
Runs until: 19 March 2023 and on tour