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A review praises Claire Lyon's mature, warmly sung portrayal of Eliza Doolittle and Nathaniel Parker's convincing Henry Higgins in a new production of My Fair Lady. Directed by Karen Johnson Mortimer, the staging follows the original Broadway designs and is praised for its acting, vocal performances, elegance and enduring mastery.
again! ” But when it’s this good, 10 years seems rather too long between elocution lessons. It still makes most other musicals seem trashy, with their cartoon characters, simplistic stories and limp or overwrought songs.
Nor could Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe ever replicate such mastery. But then, they never again had such robust raw material as George Bernard Shaw’sThe pressure on the performers playing Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins is frightening given the many brilliant predecessors, beginning with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison in 1956. Claire Lyon and Nathaniel Parker duly won us anew.
Lyon has wanted to play Eliza all her life, unsuccessfully auditioning for the 2016 incarnation of this production, which, directed by Andrews and produced by John Frost and Opera Australia, was conceived to replicate the original Broadway designs. Now Karen Johnson Mortimer replicates Andrews’ direction. Lyons performance is a victory for all who don’t give up and a lesson for all directors and producers.
She’s 18 years older than Eliza is supposed to be, yet she’s so right for the part that this discrepancy is swept away – other than for allowing her to present an Eliza who’s a little more knowing, a little less the ingenue. Lyon blossomed more after the opening scene, blossomed yet more when she mastered “the rain in Spain”, and still more when she tapped into the inner steel to stand up to Higgins’ bullying.
All Elizas must own our hearts, and Lyon’s performance enchants as she effortlessly blends comedy, elegance and singing with a beautifully rounded soprano voice. The trick with playing Higgins is for the actor to charm us into forgiving his tyranny towards Eliza, as he elevates her from a flower girl to gentlewoman, just to win a bet. If that charm is not in place, why does Eliza fall for him, given her treatment?
Parker being two decades older than Higgins’ putative age of 40 creates a fatherly dimension that clouds the phenomenally nuanced frisson of allure between Higgins and Eliza. Nonetheless, he’s splendid at being bumptious, intelligent and emotionally asinine. His delivery of the fizzing lyrics was supreme inReg Livermore, Tony Llewellyn-Jones and Robyn Nevin reprise their roles as Alfred Doolittle, Colonel Pickering and Mrs Higgins to sterling effect, with Livermore somehow evading the passing years.
The recreations of Oliver Smith’s sets and Cecil Beaton’s costumes are also stars, as are the songs, of course, realised with intricate detail by the orchestra under David Young. The ensemble looks transcendent in the Ascot scene , as the English stiff upper lip migrates to stiff upper bodies. You’d be mad to miss it.
Cellist Anastasia Kobekina leapt onto the stage, barefoot in designer pyjamas, to play Bryce Dessner’s, seizing its opening motive emphatically, dragging chords like a heavy load and dancing around its arpeggiated figurations with a mixture of deftness and determination. After an opening section of grim implacability, more tender and lyrical music emerged which grew in expressive intensity, reaching an emotional climax with a quotation fromThe dynamic liveliness returned with spiky tapped textures from the orchestral strings, leading, after some development, to intense melodic passages in the upper register from the soloist.
After a cadenza, the work ended with driven motor energy and huge appreciation for Kobekina. This was the first of two concerts of Dessner’s music with the SSO in whichwhile the soloists, Dessner and Zane Banks, picked out isolated notes like lonely points in the distance before more complex repeated motives built up to a frenetic close.
Conductor Umberto Clerici and the SSO framed Dessner’s works with an engaging performance of Gyorgy Ligeti’s individualistic and highly imaginative early work,Sometime after intermission, Georgia Maq takes a beat to tell us about the time at her mum’s cousin’s wedding when her possibly underage self saw two particular drinks next to each other. She immediately thought of the Ben Lee lyric and had to try them together.
Contrary to the song, it was not the way she liked it.
“I can’t control my legacy! ” Lee says, laughing, and they strike upThe track aged poorly during COVID but the intergenerational friendship between the two offbeat Aussie indie artists began around then, resulting with a collab on the songagain! ” But when it’s this good, 10 years seems rather too long between elocution lessons. It still makes most other musicals seem trashy, with their cartoon characters, simplistic stories and limp or overwrought songs.
Nor could Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe ever replicate such mastery. But then, they never again had such robust raw material as George Bernard Shaw’sThe pressure on the performers playing Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins is frightening given the many brilliant predecessors, beginning with Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison in 1956. Claire Lyon and Nathaniel Parker duly won us anew. Put three people into a confined space.
Add a few ominous noises and a nasty smell. Stir gently and leave to simmer. , commissioned for the Ensemble Theatre, has an elegant simplicity. Margot is the chief executive of Eco Engines, an AI-powered start-up.
Alison is her crisis communications expert. They are in the lift on their way to the 48th floor to face a press corps which is baying for blood after a tragic accident involving a self-driving car and a pedestrian. It’s all there – class, race, sexism, climate change and the AI apocalypse – just waiting to blow: The Elevator at Ensemble Theatre.
Also in the lift is Ollie, a sanitation engineer – that’s a cleaner to you and me – who has a coffee and a job to get on with. When the lift malfunctions and the accidental trio are stuck in a confined space for an undefined period of time it’s all there – class, race, sexism, climate change and the AI apocalypse – just waiting to blow.
Mozart’s symphonies are the Australian Chamber Orchestra’s heartland, and the last three, written for unknown reasons in 1788, are a cornerstone of their artistic practice, to which they have returned many times, with consistency of ethos but evolving musical perspective. Their current approach under director and violinist Richard Tognetti displays maturity without conventionality.
Familiar music is experienced as though in a constant process of formation and renewal through close attention to articulation, balance and nuance, to convey a sense of distinctive shapes being created in the moment. Although the three works have contrasting expressive purposes, there were common features to the ACO’s approach to all three. The first movements were unrushed, each imposing and weighty in its own way.
The slow second movements were, for each symphony, a highlight for their translucent balance of strings and woodwind sounds . The minuets revelled in carefully articulated individuality and grace, and the finales were each exhilaratingly brilliant in their own way. She was, well, fine.
Adequate seems harsh, good seems flattering, and middling is about right, but the show was probably elevated beyond the implications of that term by Suzanne Vega’s efforts to charm. Efforts like the donning of a top hat for the first and last songs, as a kind of “showbiz starts/ends here” signal that amused while also nodding to her early notoriety as, and natural inclination to being, a reticent public performer.
, which chronicled her own summer teen romance and its real-life denouement decades later . In the most true-blue modern dance biography you’ll ever read, Lewis Major describes himself as an enterprising sheep shearer-turned-award-winning-choreographer.
“He is the only dance artist he’s ever heard of,” his biography quips, “who can reverse parallel park a tractor. ”Major was mentored by British choreographer Russell Maliphant and lighting designer Michael Hulls. Here, he trips the light fantastic by pairing with award-winning lighting designer Fausto Brusamolino for
My Fair Lady Claire Lyon Nathanael Parker Eliza Doolittle Henry Higgins