Review: MY FAIR LADY, Chichester Festival Theatre

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Chichester has made something of a tradition in recent summers with outstanding fresh revivals of classic musicals. South Pacific in 2021, Crazy for You in 2022, The Sound of Music in 2023 and Oliver! in 2024 were all excellent but their latest production of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Lowe’s wonderful My Fair Lady is simply magnificent in every aspect. Sometimes, the Festival Theatre thrust stage becomes a handicap to their success but in this production, it becomes a joyous platform for the storytelling and dance.

Peter McKintosh’s set and costume designs are a delight. The open stage for external scenes in Covent Garden, outside a pub, at Ascot and in Wimpole Street, do enough to set the scene but leave plenty of space for the wonderful eighteen-strong ensemble and servants’ chorus to deliver Stephen Mear’s brilliantly fresh choreography. While the interior of Higgins’ study and his mother’s conservatory are cleverly staged on a raised platform on a revolve, which works a treat giving different levels, and detailed furniture to add to the comedy and drama of Higgins’ conversations with Pickering, Eliza and his mother. When we are at the ball, the wonderful band is visible above the Covent Garden portico adding to the setting.

Surely everybody knows the story. Higgins is a master of phonetics and dialogue, and agrees to a bet with Pickering that he can pass the flower girl, he has briefly met outside the opera, as a Duchess in six months. He has no thought about “what will become of ‘er” after that and singlemindedly sets about teaching her to speak English. He treats everyone the same whether they are a flower girl or a Duchess and therefor,e tends to offend everyone equally.

Director Rachel Kavanaugh marshals the large cast with great skill, ensuring we get every moment of clever comedy, strong characterisations and delightful interplay between them. For once, the cavernous Festival auditorium feels intimate as we see the nuanced reactions of observers of Higgins’ behaviour from servants, flower sellers, market traders and the society’s finest citizens!

Hadley Fraser is simply superb in every way. Full of energy rushing around his study, oblivious to the reactions he creates and most importantly, delivering his songs with a fine well phrased voice as good as we have ever heard them sung. ‘I’m an Ordinary Man’ and ‘Hymn to Him’ are wonderfully performed, revealing his character superbly with some lovely detail. Finty Williams elevates with her reactions as Mrs Pearce, his housekeeper, to a moral compass on his actions. Colonel Pickering, Tony Jawawardena, brings out the caring side while revelling in the success of ‘The Rain in Spain’ and ‘You Did It’.

Of course, the show needs an Eliza Dolittle who can evolve from flower girl into a force to be reckoned with, and Keziah Ibe in her professional stage debut rises to that challenge. As so often with the role, she really shines once she drops the hackney-ed cockney accent, but she delivers ‘Wouldn’t be Loverly’ with the cockney quartet with great charm, and we see her spirits rise in ‘Just You Wait’ before her enchanting duet with an excellent Freddy, Ben Culleton. She emerges triumphant, a force to be reckoned with, and an actress with huge potential ahead of her.

But the show would not be the same without the transformation of Alfred Dolittle from drunken scrounger into middle class toff, and Gary Milner is an absolute delight leading the ensemble into two fabulous dance routines in ‘With a Little Bit of Luck’ and ‘I’m Getting Married’. It is a showstopping performance with routines that are executed with such precision and joy.

This is three hours of pure theatrical pleasure with a wonderful cast, rich and perfect sound mix, clever staging and fresh inventive choreography that shows off the brilliant score and transformational narrative to perfection. As Higgins tells us, “Eliza you were magnificent” and as Eliza reminds us, “I’m a good girl I am!” and they are both right. Go see this brilliant production!

***** Five stars

Reviewed by: Nick Wayne

My Fair Lady plays at Chichester Festival Theatre until 5 September, with further info here.