Presented by South Australian Light Opera Society (aka SALOS)
Reviewed 21st April, 2022
Many marvels are encompassed in SALOS’s latest musical theatre offering. Director Maria Davis (with help from Bernadette Abberdan) gives us a fresh, bright look at a dear old friend. From the pre-show “turn off your phones” announcement delivered by Cordelia Ferguson’s perky Paperboy amidst a Covent Gardens street scene, Davis signals her willingness to revise and re-imagine this fine show. Its bone structure is impeccable, built firmly on George Bernard Shaw’s witty Pygmalion(1913), a passionate play about language, accent and manners. The stage musical My Fair Lady (1956) adheres to much of Shaw’s plot and some of his acerbic language too, thanks to Alan Jay Lerner’s careful craft in both book and lyrics.
In Delanie Whibley, Davis has found an Eliza Doolittle who looks right, acts well and sings beautifully (although her intonation drifts south when she forces tone in her high range). Moving with grace and speaking with fine articulatory clarity in both Cockney and Received Pronunciation (R.P.) accents, Whibley works well all night. Plodding musical tempi sometimes made her work harder than necessary, especially in the vituperative Just You Wait, which Whibley acted and sang well, despite orchestral torpor.
Professor Henry Higgins is the other pivotal role in this show. Linguist, phonetician and inventor of the Universal Alphabet, Higgins is the archetypal self-absorbed academic. Adam Schultz plays him with confident pomposity and an air of entitlement. Schultz brings strength and energy to this complex role. Although he follows Rex Harrison’s sprechgesang lead in some songs, Schultz shows a more serviceable singing voice than Harrison’s. Again, orchestral tempi sagged just when Schultz was trying to be brisk, as in Why Can’t The English?. It should be a patter song. Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man? was taken at a better tempo, which enabled Schultz to sing it well. Schultz’s character is the author of one of the great marvels of this show: where on earth did Eliza learn to speak such beautifully enunciated Received Pronunciation? It certainly wasn’t from this Professor Higgins, whose vowels and diphthongs remain stubbornly colonial, and whose articulation, especially of terminal consonants, would never satisfy a phonetician.
Russell Ford, as Colonel Pickering, may well be to blame. His Pickering accent rarely wavers all night, and his fluency, clarity and excellent acting work strengthens each scene he is in. Bernadette Abberdan is superb as Mrs Higgins. Her secure and clear performance adds social confidence and human warmth whilst maintaining those vital class distinctions which are at the very heart of the show. Another solid anchor in the company is Bronwyn Calvett, playing Mrs Pearce, Higgins’ housekeeper – mediator between the world and the mad professor. Calvett’s work is beautifully calibrated; she never pulls focus but always builds trust and integrity through her acting. In Poor Professor Higgins and I Could Have Danced All Night, we catch just a glimpse of her potential as a singing actress.
Weakest link in the main cast is Alfred P. Doolittle, a character beloved world-wide for his rumbustious spirit and opportunistic guile. John Martin misses large swathes of both text and lyrics in his performance; he appears to be largely at sea. I rechristened his two famous party-pieces “With a little bit of text” and “Get me to the verse on time”. It is to be hoped that he finds confidence and regains text as the run progresses.
Sandra Fameli’s Mrs Hopkins is grotesquely energetic and richly entertaining. (Next stop, Madame Thénardier.) Freddy Eynsford-Hill is a fairly thankless role, relieved only by the joy of singing On The Street Where You Live. Aled Proeve has just the right look and lively charm, but his vocal quality is not up to the sustained phrasing and legato demands of this beautiful song.
In all, twenty-six cast members combine to make this show, with many playing both small roles as well as ensemble. And an ensemble is what we hear all night. Another marvel: the choral singing is the best I have heard in a SALOS show. Thanks to Helen Loveday (Musical Director), the singing is brighter, crisper, clearer and more accurate. And – praise be! – the ensemble members actually listen to each other. Loveday conducts a seven-piece orchestra who mostly manage to play the score competently. The trumpeter was either overcome with first-night nerves or narcolepsy. Loveday’s tempi are sometimes at odds with the dramatic demands of the performance.
Choreography by Georgina Lumb dovetails beautifully with Davis’ vision of a busy, lively stage filled with action. Lumb deploys her resources wisely, given limited space and the wide variation of movement skills. Her full-stage numbers, little ensemble background events and focussed dance pieces are alike well planned and neatly executed.
A word about the length of the show. Some scene changes are interminable. The underscore stops. The curtains remain drawn. We wait, listening to assorted heavy thumps as a removalist is clearly at work. During one scene change, there is an attempt to entertain us with the sound effect of galloping horse hooves. This has nothing to do with the previous scene, or the one we are awaiting. It passes the time. In Act 2, it takes a full minute of silence and darkness to get us from “Higgins’ Study” to “Garden of Mrs Higgins’ House”. In Davis’s defence, the script demands major set changes, easily encompassed in a large house with a fly tower and decent backstage and wings space. Tower Arts Centre lacks that sort of tower. If changes of scene were less realistically indicated, perhaps the between-scene gaps could be made more swiftly. To look on the bright side, however, at 3 hours and 20 minutes, this show is a winner. At $30 (your top-price ticket), you’re entertained for a mere 15 cents a minute. Unbeatable value.
Review by Pat. H. Wilson
Venue: Tower Arts Theatre, Pasadena
Season: 21st April – 1st May, 2022
Duration: 3 hours 20 minutes (incl. interval)
Tickets: $30:00 (conc. $26:00)
Bookings: Phone Pam on 8294.6582
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