My Fair Lady
When you watch a good production of My Fair Lady - and Starlight Musical Theatre's got one - you hear the great songs and literate speech, but there's another kind of music as well. Along with the various accents, from clipped Brahmin Ascot to the dropped h
's of Lisson Grove, the cast shouts so many oohs and ahs and cor-blimies you'd think you were watching the Beer Pong Championship of the British Isles. The production always feels sure-handed. If an upstaging jet blasts overhead during a song, the singer keeps going - Lerner and Loewe will take no back seat to air traffic! If it happens during a speech, the cast doesn't simply freeze; they adopt expressive Pageant of the Masters poses, as if in defiance of silver-bellied interlopers. The show's real strength is the leads. Norman Large plays Professor Higgins big, but not grandiose. He sings with clear, pointed tones and drenches the man with Shavian attitude (Henry's convinced he has "the milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein") but leaves just enough room for vulnerability. As Eliza, Jennifer Boswell runs the vocal gamut from "Jest yew woit, 'enry 'iggins" to "Without You" and does it beautifully. Red-faced Stephen R. Reynolds is always fun as Alfred P. Doolittle, especially when he becomes "respek-able." And Chanlon Jay Kaufman, who plays smitten Freddy Eynsford-Hill, has a narrow aperture. Like an Olympic athlete, he's got one chance to star, in this case one song. And when Kaufman sings "On the Street Where You live," he grabs the gold.
Worth a try.
When
Ongoing until Sunday, August 31, 2008
Hours
| Sundays, 7:30pm |
| Thursdays, 7:30pm |
| Fridays, 7:30pm |
| Saturdays, 7:30pm |