My Fair Lady - It Was Loverly

Dallas Murray Richards, 97, Lauren Elizabeth Stewart, 12, April 11, 2015

With the conversion of the Vancouver Ford Theatre into a church the idea of going to a well performed, large cast, full orchestra musical is just about non-existent. The Arts Club Theatre Company does its best to accommodate with plays like Mary Poppins or It’s a Wonderful Life within the limitations of the Stanley Theatre (now the Stanley Industrial Alliance Theatre) which was never built for that sort of thing.

Last year I found out there was a pleasant option that involved going to the Royal City of New Westminster and its splendid Massey Theatre. My granddaughter Lauren (then 11) witnessed a Royal City Musical Theatre production of Annie.

This year, my granddaughter Lauren and I attended the opening on Saturday. Nothing has changed in Vancouver but the Royal City Musical Theater mounted a full blown My Fair Lady, book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe, with Artistic Director Valery Easton ably assisted by director Max Reimer. Before I go on I must point out the lesser know fact that Reimer began his days in theatre as a dancer. Easton was a jazz dancer in the CBC variety shows of the 70s and 80s. That adds up to very good dancing in this adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play Pygmalion.

Can you imagine my delight when Dallas Murray Richards and his wife Muriel sat right next to us?

At the interval Richards told me that the large orchestra was made up of amateurs who were all very good.  They were. For me the real star of the show besides the splendid actors, singers and musicians was Set Designer Brian Bell.

His sets were ample proof that much is lost in movies and their special effects. The transformation of the different scenes, a grimy London, Henry Higgins’s interior drawing room, the outside scene from The Street Where You Live and the Ascot Horse Races all happened with complex revolving of sets that were then pushed or pulled. It was a tour de force.It was magic.

Both Lauren and I were familiar to see Warren Kimmel as Henry Higgins. We have seen him twice in the last two year as the father in the Arts Club Theatre production of Mary Poppins. 

The whole house was impressed by the tenor singing of Thomas Lamont who plays the nerdish Freddy Eynsford-Hill. Few might know that George Bernard Shaw stuck to his guns and for years had Freddy marry Eliza Doolittle and they set up their flower shop.

Tracy Neff as Eliza Doolittle was just right although in my books she looked much too clean in the beginning. I guess I had the grimy Wendy Hiller in my mind who played Eliza in the 1938 adaptation of Shaw’s play into a film, Pygmalion. I saw that film many times as a young boy as my mother adored Leslie Howard who was Henry Higgins.

John Payne as Alfred Doolittle rendered With A Little Bit Of Luck most entertaining with lots of dancing and backed up by good singers.

Going to a theatre with a red curtain and red walls and seats is always an experience when one compares it with that of attending a film (you are shouted “Enjoy the show,” many times) at the Scotia Bank Cinema on Burrard. That I shared my experience with my delighted Lauren made it all that much more special.

 I have never associated Audrey Hepburn with Eliza Doolittle because of the many times I saw Wendy Hiller on film. If anything the later adaptation of the Broadway play into the 1964 film was special for both my mother and I as we were fans of Rex Harrison whom we loved in The Ghost of Mrs. Muir with Gene Tierney.

 For me Audrey Hepburn was the young princess in the 1953 film Roman Holiday. I was lucky enough to photograph her in 1984 under circumstances that I regret to this day (read the link).  Having seen My Fair Lady on Sunday I wish I could have been Pygmalion and Hepburn my Galatea. Perhaps had I summoned  Aphrodite, Hepburn would have been transformed to the princess in Roman Holiday.

My Fair Lady runs until the 26th of April.