You might not think that a musical, written by Austrian-American duo Alan Lerner and Frederick Loewe in the 1950s, set in Edwardian London and based on a 1913 play by Anglo-Irishman George Bernard Shaw — that was, in turn, first performed in German — would resonate in SA today.
But that is exactly the case with Pieter Toerien and Cape Town Opera’s My Fair Lady, which opens in Johannesburg next week.
Combining the spectacle of opera with the stagecraft of musical theatre, this production is a feast for the eyes and ears: the costumes and sets are extravagant, matching the almost-excessively talented cast. Leading SA diva Brittany Smith and bright new star of the local musical scene Leah Mari share the role of Eliza Doolittle, repeating the successful experiment they undertook in The Sound of Music last year.
The show is a triumph and a delight, but it is not merely a piece of comic operetta escapism. Its satirical edge cuts into the fixed class distinctions in England that have long been marked by accent and the ability to speak “proper English”. This phenomenon is all too familiar to South Africans. After all, we inherited linguistically-inflected classism as a legacy of colonialism (compounded and complicated, of course, by racial hierarchies; one of the minor pleasures of this production is that colour-blind casting has the effect of further sending up our collective assumptions about race and accent).
The instigator of the social disruption in My Fair Lady is Professor Henry Higgins, who bets a fellow-phonetician, Colonel Pickering, that he can “fix” Eliza’s ingrained cockney expression and get her to pass as a lady of the upper class.
Higgins prides himself on his ability to discern a person’s identity from their accent, even though he shows disdain for the notion that accent should determine social status. He is thus a knot of contradictions. He has egalitarian impulses — being equally rude to a flower seller like Eliza and to a duchess — yet he seems entirely oblivious to his privileged status as a member of high society. He is, really, a narcissist: he sees Eliza as a scientific project and a means of displaying his skill.
Eliza, for her part, begins as the butt of most of the jokes but soon realises she has a rare opportunity for social mobility. As the plot unfolds, she becomes the moral centre of the story — or at least a test for Higgins. Is he redeemable? Will he recognise Eliza’s humanity?
While there are plenty of high jinks, the laughter induced by the slapstick and the verbal sparring between them has a dark side, redolent of Shakespeare’s play The Taming of the Shrew: one of Higgins’ “methods” is to grant or withhold food and comfort depending on Eliza’s compliance. This misogyny is also at the core of the ancient Greek myth that Shaw invoked for the title of his play. Pygmalion was a sculptor who was driven to carve the “ideal” woman out of ivory alabaster because he so despised real women; he is, you could say, the original incel.
The actor playing Higgins has a challenge keeping him likable — something that the veteran Craig Urbani pulls off with aplomb by making his Higgins manic but not menacing, an eccentric loner who can ultimately be taught and tamed himself. He is aided in this task by Graham Hopkins’ doting but chivalrous Pickering, who joins Higgins’ mother (Adrienne Pearce) and even Eliza’s would-be suitor Freddy (Sandi Dlangalala) in representing the code of noblesse oblige.
The show is almost stolen by Mark Richardson as Eliza’s no-good father, Alfred P Doolittle, who leads the rousing ensemble numbers With a Little Bit of Luck and Get Me to the Church on Time. Any attempt at critiques of class stereotyping are thrown out of the window here, with the jolly and raucous poor conforming to type.
But My Fair Lady is not about politics or collective interests. It’s a quirky love story about two individuals who don’t quite fit in. Whether they will stay together is, as Shaw explicitly warned his audiences and readers, up for debate.
• ‘My Fair Lady’ is at the Teatro at Montecasino from January 23 to March 2 and opens in Durban on 8 March.
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.