![]() Soon after, Eliza comes to Higgins's house, seeking elocution lessons so that she can get a job as an assistant in a florist's shop. Doolittle, stops by the next morning searching for money for a drink (" With a Little Bit of Luck"). Eliza and her friends wonder what it would be like to live a comfortable life (" Wouldn't It Be Loverly?").Įliza's father, Alfred P. Higgins also meets Colonel Pickering, another linguist, and invites him to stay as his houseguest. The noted phonetician Professor Henry Higgins encounters Eliza at Covent Garden and laments the vulgarity of her dialect ("Why Can't the English?"). In Edwardian London, Eliza Doolittle is a flower girl with a thick Cockney accent. Many revivals have followed, and the 1964 film version won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews starred in both productions. It set a record for the longest run of any musical on Broadway up to that time and was followed by a hit London production. The musical's 1956 Broadway production was a notable critical and popular success, winning six Tony Awards, including Best Musical. Despite his cynical nature and difficulty understanding women, Higgins grows attached to her. The story concerns Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins, a phonetician, so that she may pass as a lady. My Fair Lady is a musical based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. You want a man for her who has the intellect of Higgins but the heart of her younger love interest, Freddy.Original Broadway Poster by Al HirschfeldĢ002 Laurence Olivier Award for Best Musical Revival I don’t think modern audiences would want Eliza to end up with any of the male characters. The song Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man? seems to me to emphasise that Pickering might be the perfect partner for Higgins, rather than that Eliza is not right for him, and you want them to live in a world where they could openly explore that.Īs for the show’s conclusion, it would be satisfying if Higgins met with a grizzly end, as described in the revenge song Just You Wait. You want Eliza to succeed and to win, but I found myself also wanting Higgins and Colonel Pickering to go off into the sunset holding hands. ![]() It feels like the very definition of a guilty pleasure, to listen to a tirade of sexist insults that includes language such as: “You squashed cabbage leaf, you disgrace to the noble architecture of these columns, you incarnate insult to the English language.” You dislike him for how he treats her but he’s hugely entertaining as a wordsmith, and when he expresses himself through song, thanks to Rex Harrison’s performance you like him even more. His treatment of her is horrendous, but the writer in me can’t help but enjoy his choice of words. He sets out to dehumanise Eliza by calling her a “presumptuous insect” or a “draggle-tailed guttersnipe”. He is awful to Eliza and not much better to his housekeeper, Mrs Pearce. On a rewatch as an adult, it’s clear Higgins has contempt for all women, except, maybe, his mother. A child may not have a nuanced view on Professor Henry Higgins’s treatment of women but is more likely to really enjoy Eliza shouting “ COME ON, DOVER! MOVE YOUR BLOOMIN’ ARSE!” Arse is simply a fantastic word for a female protagonist to shout, and that moment in the film is as joyful to me now as it was 30-odd years ago. Photograph: Kim HardyĮliza is not treated well by the male characters but as a younger person I don’t think the misogyny really registered. Amara Okereke, who will play Eliza in the forthcoming production at the London Coliseum, is said to have watched My Fair Lady 200 times. ![]()
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