| I realized in 16 bars of "Loverly" that this person was singing behind the beat on every single syllable, and she did so for the entire performance. At first I thought it might be a failure in the sound design, that she couldn't hear the orchestra or see the conductor or something. But I realized soon enough that it's just her utter lack of musicianship and understanding of the style of the score. I was also annoyed every time she threw in some meaningless pause between random lyrics, which made no sense and further violated the very tight operetta style of Lerner's lyrics matched with Loewe's precise Vienesse-operetta derived music. Add to that her curious habit of gazing aimlessly at the ceiling while she sang, never once including or opening up to the audience in her song delivery. Overall, I got the extremely negative impression of someone who had no clue had to play a musical and had never done one before (the latter proves to be basically the case from her bio) – and the mean-spiritied vindictiveness of her characterization and the production's re-purporsing to shove a feminist shiv into Higgins' back in the spuriously re-written final scene completed my disaffection and hearty disapproval of this revisal. |
