{"id":12019,"date":"2015-04-17T00:14:31","date_gmt":"2015-04-17T07:14:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=12019"},"modified":"2015-04-16T18:54:21","modified_gmt":"2015-04-17T01:54:21","slug":"my-fair-lady-fantastic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2015\/04\/17\/my-fair-lady-fantastic\/","title":{"rendered":"My Fair Lady fantastic"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tracy Neff (Eliza Doolittle) and Warren Kimmel (Henry Higgins) before the phonetics lessons start. (photo by Tim Matheson)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It was hard not to sing along. In fact, the couple in the row behind me couldn\u2019t stop themselves on more than one occasion. So wonderfully witty and familiar are all of the songs in My Fair Lady<\/em>, which is playing at Massey Theatre until April 26.<\/p>\n

Directed by Max Reimer, the Royal City Musical Theatre production is well worth the trip to New Westminster. If you\u2019re like me, the proposition is daunting. I made an afternoon and evening of it, heading out from Vancouver before rush hour, enjoying a walk along the quay and dinner with friends before heading to the theatre for the 7:30 p.m. show. While it took almost an hour to get to New West, I made it back in about 25 minutes. Granted, that\u2019s about 15 minutes longer than if I had been coming from downtown, but the parking was plentiful and free \u2013 and I had longer to sing in the car on the way home, which made the drive seem that must faster.<\/p>\n

I had forgotten just how funny are the book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner \u2013 even 50ish years after they premi\u00e8red on Broadway! With the stellar cast enunciating brilliantly, nary a word was lost, and the 22-piece live orchestra and 30-plus cast also gave justice to Frederick Loewe\u2019s music.<\/p>\n

Of course, the musical\u2019s origins go back further, more than 100 years, to George Bernard Shaw\u2019s play Pygmalion<\/em>. Phonetics professor Henry Higgins bets phonetics enthusiast Colonel Pickering that he can take Eliza Doolittle, a street seller of flowers, and transform her: \u201cYou see this creature with her curbstone English that\u2019ll keep her in the gutter till the end of her days? In six months, I could pass her off as a duchess at an embassy ball. I could even get her a job as a lady\u2019s maid or a shop assistant, which requires better English.\u201d (In Shaw\u2019s version, the bet is three months to \u201cpass that girl off as a duchess at an ambassador\u2019s garden party.\u201d)<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
Jewish community members Kathryn Palmer and Jonathan Boudin in the ensemble of Royal City Musical Theatre’s My Fair Lady<\/em>. (photo by David Cooper)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Led by Warren Kimmel as Prof. Higgins and Tracy Neff as Eliza, there are many standouts in the Royal City production, including John Payne as the charming scoundrel Alfred P. Doolittle, Eliza\u2019s father, and tenor Thomas Lamont as Freddy Eynsford-Hill, who falls for Eliza at the Ascot (her test run as a lady) when she cheers on the horse Dover to win, hollering, \u201cCome on, Dover! Move your bloomin\u2019 arse!\u201d In addition to Kimmel, other Jewish community members involved in the show are Jonathan Boudin and Kathryn Palmer in the ensemble. Both do very well, but Palmer is particularly expressive, standing out as both a flower seller and a maid, very much at ease on stage.<\/p>\n

The entire cast seemed to be having a great time on the preview night I attended, good-humoredly negotiating through a couple of technical glitches, including a tough-to-light candle. And the main two sets, which go from being two sides of a London street corner to Higgins\u2019 study when they are turned around and pushed together, are fabulously detailed and necessarily sturdy (the actors must travel to a balcony on one side, a landing on the other), but they must be quite heavy \u2013 every time the halves of it slowly came together to form the study, I released a small sigh of relief.<\/p>\n

None of this detracted from the performance. In fact, these instances made it seem more intimate, and reminded me of one of the reasons live theatre is so fun to watch. It was a great show. I got lost in the words, music, sets, costumes (gorgeous!). The cast, crew and musicians all deserve kudos \u2013 as Pickering says to Higgins after the ball, \u201cAbsolutely fantastic.\u2026 You did it!\u201d<\/p>\n

For tickets ($26-$47) to<\/em> My Fair Lady at Massey Theatre through April 26, visit masseytheatre.com<\/a> or call 604-521-5050.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tracy Neff (Eliza Doolittle) and Warren Kimmel (Henry Higgins) before the phonetics lessons start. (photo by Tim Matheson) It was hard not to sing along. In fact, the couple in the row behind me couldn\u2019t stop themselves on more than one occasion. So wonderfully witty and familiar are all of the songs in My Fair […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11949,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[785],"tags":[3603,3602,3604,3605,3607,3606,3601,1699],"class_list":["post-12019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-performing-arts","tag-eliza-doolittle","tag-henry-higgins","tag-jonathan-boudin","tag-kathryn-palmer","tag-massey-theatre","tag-royal-city-musical-theatre","tag-tracy-neff","tag-warren-kimmel"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}