| Laura Benanti / revisiting My Fair Lady | |
| Last Edit: ablankpage 12:59 am EST 01/31/19 | |
| Posted by: ablankpage 12:59 am EST 01/31/19 | |
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| I guess spoiler warning? Do we have to say that almost a year into the run of a canonical musical? I’m going to go into some detail about the performances, so specificity warning! After that great Times review, I decided to go back for the new cast of My Fair Lady. I’ll say, first of all, that I really didn’t care for this production the first time around. I thought Lauren Ambrose was a lovely singer and a fine actress, but the character was buried under 300 pounds of SERIOUS THEATER. Laura Benanti, by contrast, is playing a musical comedy which is what it actually is. I sometimes feel in Bartlett Sher’s work that he doesn’t trust his audience to get it, so everything is in bold and triple highlighted. (His infamous ending is still an absolute nightmare.) I think what must have made My Fair Lady such a popular hit in the first place was the battle of two very charismatic stars playing an engaging story. To be honest, the plotting of the musical, with a verrrrrry long first act and a start and stop second act, has always felt a little boring to me. The music is gorgeous, but sometimes a song or three feels shoehorned in. (“I Could Have Danced All Night” has always felt like it was in the wrong place; wouldn’t dancing at the ball be more exciting than two seconds of a living room tango? Wouldn’t Eliza’s high make for a better pay off in “You Did It”?) Anyway, my point is I don’t think it’s a piece that can hold too much weight. Light, crisp, funny performances move it along and keep it from dragging. With Benanti, it feels like watching a pro musical actress do what she does best. She sparkles and the whole production breathes easier with her at the center. Even the ensemble seems to be having more fun. Just from the first scene, I could feel a stronger connection to her family of street vendors, which made her return in Act II especially poignant. She also had nice small moments with the servants. Her Eliza was someone everyone fell in love with, not a lonely soldier fighting for her place like Ambrose’s sometimes seemed. There was one especially charming accident during the introduction to “Just You Wait” where she threw her book before Higgins fully closed the door and hit him in the face. When she turned around to start singing, she sort of giggled the first few words which made the audience scream. Her performance invited us to laugh, while with Ambrose it was almost too intellectual at times, like we were supposed to be silently nodding with a finger on our chin. I also loved at the races when she was being introduced to everyone. As each character gave a distinct line reading of “How do you do?” Benanti echoed it right back. It was such a smart choice that really paid off in comedy gold. Also, she closed the top door and then popped back through for one more verse of “I Could Have Danced All Night,” which was so bratty and funny. Just lots of small details that reshaped the whole evening. Not to say Benanti was a clown the whole time. She hit several strong dramatic beats that were very affecting. Her scene with Higgins and “Without You” was fiery and pointed and made an excellent case for the relevancy of the piece in 2019. I also found her song interpretation much freer and more dynamic. Ambrose, again, was a little clinical in her strict technicality, while Benanti let the vocal line go where it needed to drive home the text. I did notice, now having seen two well-trained singers tackle it, that it’s just a horribly written part for the soprano voice. “Show Me” hangs out in the passaggio, which makes it impossible to give it any kind of force. Everything else should probably come up or go down a step or two to make it easier. “I Could Have Danced All Night” is the only song that really stays up in a comfortable place without too many crosses back and forth to chest voice. I think if Julie Andrews had been a more experienced singer and/or a bigger star, she probably would have put her foot down and Eliza’s songs would sound very different. Now, Laura’s accent. Yikes. Melania Doolittle, Laura Doolittle, Who Knows Wholittle. It was a lot of things, but it was not cockney. I wonder why no one on the production staff was dispatched to get that in place before she started rehearsals. She probably had the typical two weeks that a replacement gets, but they certainly knew she was coming in well before that. It just seems like an odd thing to leave your leading lady to her own devices on a tough accent for Americans. Or, on the other hand, maybe they tried and she just can’t do it. It was awfully distracting a lot of the time. Somehow, despite that glaring flaw, I still found her amazing in the part. Danny Burstein seemed to me like a much better fit for Alfred. He definitely brought more range to the part, giving some hints are a dark menace in his first scene that were interesting. And his monologue in Higgins’ study had a really beautiful winding shape and logic to it. It’s not much of a part (why TWO songs?!), but he really filled it out with a ton of impressive detail. He’s just in the top tier of incredible stage actors of our time, I always think of him as the male Jan Maxwell. It’s absolutely insane that he doesn’t have a Tony or several. Rosemary Harris was a HUGE improvement over Diana Rigg, who I did not enjoy at all. (Sorry!) What a goddess of a woman. I had to triple check that she’s 91. Absolutely incredible that she can stroll across that football field, let alone with poise and pathos. Her line readings were beautiful and gave a real sense of the feminist undercurrent of the piece in her last scene. Am I in the minority in saying that I can’t stand Allan Corduner’s performance? I find him so hammy with lots of weird, pointless gesturing and playing to the audience. He seems like a Waiting for Guffman character except even more earnest. Christian Dante White has a gorgeous, full-throated baritone that was thrilling to hear live. Freddy is an odd character with no development (we find out in a punchline that he’s broke?) or resolution (he waits for so long and then vanishes), but Christian was a natural and charming presence. He definitely deserves a higher profile than he’s received, that is a leading man’s voice. And Harry Hadden-Paton is just as great, maybe better, than he was last spring. His “I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face” really is a masterclass in musical theater acting. And he somehow makes a highly unlikable pig into a charming and sympathetic human. It’s a beautifully understated and effective performance and I appreciate the fuck out of him for still doing it so well after a long run. That house set is still as loud as ever, especially as it rumbles right over the climax of “I Could Have Danced All Night.” There’s a lot about this production that just makes me groan and roll my eyes, but it is nice to see a Golden Age musical presented in grand style like this. |
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