REVIEW: My Fair Lady – female empowerment themes continue to sing and chime with our times

A spectacular revival of smash-hit musical My Fair Lady is now melting away the winter snow in Birmingham.

The energetic merry-go-round of a show is currently playing at The Birmingham Hippodrome until Sunday 19 March. 

The award-winning musical first premiered on Broadway in 1956 and later spawned a famous film adaptation that picked up eight Oscars.

The show by Lerner and Loewe is based on George Bernard Shaw’s female empowerment play Pygmalion and tells the story of a poor working-class girl called Eliza Doolittle who sells flowers on the streets of London.

Eliza becomes a pawn in a wager between a pretentious and elitist phonetics professor and his friend. The linguistics expert bets with his friend that he can train Eliza and turn her into an upper-class lady with perfect poise and remove her cockney accent.

The epic show – epic in length and content – rises or falls on the casting of the two main roles. This big and lush production has found a magical pairing in Rebekah Lowings as Eliza and Michael D. Xavier as Professor Higgins.

These two consummate performers not only move out of the long shadow cast by the iconic Hollywood incarnations of their characters – the dainty and fiery Audrey Hepburn and the effortlessly smooth Rex Harrison – but give such passionate and charming readings of their roles that they stamp their own unique mark.

Lowings shows Eliza’s journey and transformation from a cockney flower seller from the east end to a sophisticated lady who moves about elegantly in the drawing rooms of the elite. Her innocence and sense of discovery are infectious and the audience sides with her immediately.

Xavier invests his rigid character with a comedic pompous persona which begins to thaw as he interacts with the warmth that Eliza brings into his life which challenge his own conceited views on class, gender and equality.

There’s also major casting coup as soap star Adam Woodyatt (Ian Beale in Eastenders) takes on the role of Alfred (Eliza’s father) and world famous soprano Lesley Garrett as Mrs Pearce (Professor Higgins’ housekeeper). The part of Higgins’ wager buddy Colonel Pickering is beautifully by John Middleton (Ashley Thomas from Emmerdale) who brings wit to his character.

The revolving staging of this production is on a grand scale with gargantuan sets that make good use of the Hippodrome’s vast stage.

Every detail from Catherine Zuber’s costume designs to the interior of Professor Higgins’ house – with spiralling staircase, Victorian furniture, rich tapestries and carpets, and an array of scientific equipment littering the tables – reek of authenticity.

A great deal of time, effort and artistic talent has gone into crafting this production and making it look so incredibly realistic.

Director Bartlett Sher has crafted magic with this production of My Fair Lady. He removes the cobwebs of time and makes the show a relevant and exciting piece of theatre for a modern audience.

The powerful theme of female empowerment in this musical remains potent and resonates with the current state of our world which is battling with toxic masculinity. This is the kind of show that not only entertains but also inspires the heart and mind.

VERDICT: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

My Fair Lady is running at The Birmingham Hippodrome until Sunday 19 March