Thanks for your detailed post. I will just chime in on on e of your thoughts. Dialects. In one major way there is nothing more important in Pygmalion/My Fair Lady than the dialects. Eliza wants to speak better, in order to get a job in shop, rather than having to work outside hustling flowers on the streets. Higgins and Pickering go her one better - and transform her speech and manner into that of a lady, making a shop job no out of the question. Its about how the way you speak signals what class you are in - a very important issue in Britain for aeons - and in the US if truth be told.
In this production, dialects have been a disaster area since day one. I don't believe Bart Sher cares in the least about them. Lauren Ambrose could not do Cockney to save her life. And Norbert as Doolittle? The less said the better. No dialect ever known to man was what he spoke. There is a reason that Stanley Holloway and George Rose played Doolittle previously on Broadway. They knew him. They breathed him.
And NY critics curiously give a free pass to bad dialects. Just recall Christopher Walken in THE DEAD, or Cherry Jones in FAITH HEALER, or Jay O Sanders as Doolittle at Roundabout. All great actors. All dialect challenged. Not their faults - bad casting.
And here we just see it again. To hell with what the role demands, I don't care. Thats what Mr Sher tells us here. And at Mockinbird, for that matter, where he and Mr Sorkin and Mr Rudin make a hash of a great American novel. |
