| re: Changes to MY FAIR LADY that were and weren't made for the most recent Broadway production | |
| Posted by: NewtonUK 07:24 am EST 03/09/21 | |
| In reply to: Changes to MY FAIR LADY that were and weren't made for the most recent Broadway production - Michael_Portantiere 09:59 pm EST 03/08/21 | |
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| Sadly Mr Sher and LCT should have not just done MFL, rather than do a production with the only the second Doolittle I have ever seen who couldn't do a Cockney dialect. Bernard Shaw was always infatuated with Mrs Patrcik Campbell - and by all accounts he did some good work creating Eliza Doolittle on stage - though there was comment even way back when that she was awfully old for the part. In the text, which Shaw wrote, 'She is perhaps eighteen, perhaps twenty, hardly older." Julie Andrews was 21 when MFL opened on Broadway. Eliza is a girl, from a rough background. Like the story the ttle of Shaws play comes from, Huggins wants to create the perfect young woman from the miserable 'squashed cabbage leaf' of Eliza. He does so - beyond his wildest dreams. But, like dr Frankenstein, Higgins creates not the shell of a young woman, but a strong, fiercely independent young woman. She has everything that the Society girls have - with so much more. There is a symbiotic relationship between Higgins and Eliza - he pushes he hard but is NEVER cruel to her. The closest he comes is the thoughtless request for his slippers, and she throws him at his head. What Shaw knew (more or less) is that Higgins had achieved what he sset out do even if he didn;t know it. He gave of himself to create in Eliza a great, talented, bright woman - his match on every level, and superior in some. I see nothing wrong with this story in 2020/21. If oine doesnt like it, one can do a different musical. But importantly Eliza is a girl - not a 41 year old woman who, also, can't do a Cockney dialect. What drives the play is the specific variety of accents - and Higgins and Pickerings ability to pick them out. At LCT, Eliza and Doolittle had accents that no one earth could recognise, and Eliza was a woman way past saving. A great great musical deserved so much more |
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| Previous: | re: Changes to MY FAIR LADY that were and weren't made for the most recent Broadway production - Michael_Portantiere 11:47 pm EST 03/09/21 |
| Next: | re: Changes to MY FAIR LADY that were and weren't made for the most recent Broadway production - larry13 10:17 pm EST 03/08/21 |
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