Review: My Fair Lady, Opera Australia

September 2016, Sydney Opera House

With this Julie Andrews-directed production returning for another season, this time at the Capitol Theatre, I thought I'd go back and look at some of my notes from last year's initial run...

This Opera Australia production is quite by-the-book, with charming performances all around and some good stage and costume design. If you have seen the movie, or in fact any production of this, there's nothing here to particularly surprise. Then again – I guess every production is by the book because what can you possibly change? The songs and the characters in and of themselves set the era and the place very firmly. If you're going to update, well - I mean, you end up with something like Educating Rita, don't you?

Seeing this brought back memories of watching the 1964 movie on video as a child, on repeat, back when I really did think Higgins and Eliza would marry at the end. Now I'm really glad she doesn't, and certain that he never will - it's overall more satisfyingly read to me as a platonic friendship.

That said I wish we knew more about what happened afterwards. On what terms can a man and woman live together in Edwardian London, if they are not relations? I mean NO WONDER everyone thought she was a kept woman. But I really want to believe her statement that she doesn't want romantic love from him, but friendship and respect.

Apropos of nothing - this would run as an interesting double bill with Hitchcock's Vertigo, which also involves the transformation of a woman to suit the ideals and goals of a man – except that Judy loses herself, her identity and eventually her life, whereas Eliza in the end asserts herself, challenges Higgins, changes him as much as he changes her - or at least I choose to believe it's so.

 

BOOK & LYRICS Alan Jay Lerner
MUSIC BY Frederick Loewe
ADAPTED FROM George Bernard Shaw's play and Gabriel Pascal's motion picture Pygmalion

DIRECTOR Julie Andrews
CHOREOGRAPHER Christopher Gattelli
SET DESIGNER Oliver Smith
COSTUME DESIGNER Cecil Beaton
SCENIC SUPERVISION Rosaria Sinisi
COSTUME RECREATION John David Ridge
LIGHTING DESIGNER Richard Pilbrow
SOUND DESIGNER Michael Waters
HAIR AND WIG DESIGNER John Isaacs
MAKE-UP DESIGNER Rick Sharp
MUSICAL DIRECTOR Guy Simpson
ASSOCIATE SCENIC SUPERVISOR Naomi Berger
ASSOCIATE LIGHTING DESIGNER Michael Gottlieb
ASSOCIATE CHOREOGRAPHER Stephen Bienskie
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Karen Johnson Mortimer

PROFESSOR HIGGINS Alex Jennings
ELIZA DOOLITTLE Anna O'Byrne
ALFRED P. DOOLITTLE Reg Livermore
MRS. HIGGINS Robyn Nevin
FREDDY EYNSFORD-HILL Mark Vincent
COLONEL PICKERING Tony Llewellyn-Jones
MRS. PEARCE Deidre Rubenstein
KARPATHY David Whitney

Review: Swan Lake/Loch na hEala, Sadler's Wells and Sydney Opera House

31 August, Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House

This touring Irish production from writer, director and choreographer Michael Keegan-Dolan is an adaptation of Swan Lake, mixing theatre with contemporary dance in a modernised setting; and rather than Tchaikovsky, the music is by Dublin trio Slow Moving Clouds.

In this retelling, Jimmy (Alexander Leonhartsberger) is a depressed thirty-something grieving his father and the loss of their ancestral home, while his disabled mother frets over his single status. Fionala (Rachel Poirier), the swan, is the victim of an abusive priest played by Mikel Murfi, in one of several roles, binding the story together as the narrator and Rothbart analogue.

I came for the dance but it was the story choices and the narrative moments that really worked me. The modern update, blending melancholy realism and myth, is very effective.

I also really liked that this adaptation gives a true backstory to Fionala/Odette - my usual complaint about Swan Lake is that it gives too much time to the prince, who is frankly the least interesting. In the traditional version his story is the overarching thread; this version can be more truly said to have dual storylines, intertwined, as much her story as it is his.

The dancing, surprisingly, was the least interesting part for me. Aside from a rhapsodic, freewheeling dance at the end with the whole cast and the stage awash in feathers, I found the choreography only… adequate.

Not my favourite version in my quest to see All The Swan Lakes, and gosh I miss Tchaikovsky, and the traditional choreo to be honest - but a show worth seeing. And only 75 minutes! PERFECT.

Content warning: haze, smoke, feathers?, sexual violence