She Did It! Rachel Kavanaugh’s production and newcomer Keziah Ibe’s Eliza hit the right notes

Chichester festival Theatre

⭑⭑⭑⭑

Keziah Ibe & Hadley Fraser in My Fair Lady. Photo: Johan Persson

Let’s start at the beginning. Except, where is the beginning? The overture is missing! I love an overture. It sets the mood and fills you with anticipation.

But it seems churlish to complain when Rachel Kavanaugh‘s production plunges you straight into the uplifting story of an impoverished cockney flower seller called Eliza Doolittle. She soon encounters and confronts Professor Henry Higgins, an expert in phonetics. The musical establishes their characters from the get-go, so we the audience glimpse from the start the quality of the two stars on which the musical stands or falls.

Higgins is entitled, lacking social skills, self centred, insensitive and misogynistic but in Hadley Fraser’s hands, this is leavened by his child-like enthusiasm. He’s often shown in production as stiff and distant but here his sheer bullheaded enthusiasm- and Groucho Marx-like postures- make him more loveable than expected.

Eliza is feisty and ultra aware of her inferior position in society. Keziah Ibe, making her theatrical debut, gets the mix right. And she nails the first big song of the night Wouldn’t It Be Loverly? That’s a relief because a lot of big songs are coming her way, which she goes on to sing beautifully and with expression.

So it’s game on as Higgins and his friend Colonel Pickering set about transforming this ‘squashed cabbage leaf’ as he calls Eliza into a Lady. It’s worth noting that Eliza initiates the process by offering to pay for lessons- an entrepreneurial move that flies in the face of Higgins’ sexist views, as expressed in Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?

This is the first time 60 year old Chichester Festival Theatre has presented My Fair Lady. So how do the open spaces of the huge thrust stage with no capacity to fly in scenery convey the spectacle? Not with big sets. The lavish Embassy Ball at which the transformed Eliza triumphs is represented by, in effect, a few standard lamps, the ‘street where she lives’ is two lengths of iron fencing, Ascot Races an empty stage. The Chichester ‘wow’ factor, picking up from the musical’s use of the ensemble to provide a kind of Greek chorus, is to fill the stage with people.

So we have Gary Milner as Eliza’s dustman father Alfred P Doolittle leading an exuberant chorus of around twenty through Stephen Mear’s complex choreography in With A Little Bit Of Luck and I’m Getting Married In The Morning, as well as a more restrained but still impressive circle of racegoers. It’s not completely sparse of scenery. There is one magnificent set, namely Henry Higgins’ study. Designer Peter McIntosh has created a massive truck that sweeps on and off stage, full of cluttered corners and different levels for the actors to weave and jump through.

It’s easy to understand why some consider My Fair Lady the perfect musical. Lerner and Loewe‘s songs consistently reveal character or advance the narrative, possibly even more so than those of the great Rodgers And Hammerstein who invented the modern musical. And they’re nicely played by a small orchestra under Cat Beveridge.

Keziah Ibe performs the songs with great eloquence. Her high point is also the apex of the musical itself, the moment when she is so excited at getting the pronunciation right in The Rain In Spain. It’s a moment of euphoria for Higgins, Pickering and Eliza that leads her into the incomparable I Could Have Dance All Night.

There is also a lot of dialogue, perhaps this was because Lerner, who wrote the book as well as the lyrics, wanted to give due respect to George Bernard Shaw‘s socialist message in Pygmalion, on which the musical is based. There’s a lot of conversation about class divisions and the importance of language as a marker of class: Shaw’s point being we’re all people with the same qualities and faults under our disguises. So you need good actors, which this production has assembled in spades.

A loverly production

Gary Milner & company in My Fair Lady. Photo: Johan Persson

In the end, Eliza undergoes more than a superficial transformation. She realises there is more to happiness than a romantic husband and a ‘loverly’ room. And she has learned from those around her that there is more to class than how you speak. From Colonel Pickering, well played by Tony Jayawardena, she learns politeness and respect, although he is shown to be a bit of a dunderhead. From her father, she acquires cynicism. From Higgins, she not only acquires received English but the value of being honest to oneself and others. She also learns what she doesn’t want when she is courted by the full hearted but empty headed Freddie, nicely played by Ben Culleton. He performs On The Street Where You Live. It’s my favourite song from the musical even if it is, as the programme points out, evidence that ‘his head is too much in the clouds’. I guess I’m an old romantic.

Eliza also observes the women in Higgins’ life as a model for dealing with him. His housekeeper Mrs Pearce and his mother, given strong, humorous portrayals by Finty Williams and Belinda Lang respectively, maintain a balance between loving him and being honest with him.

Eliza initially leaves because she feels unrecognised for her achievement. (Higgins and Pickering take all the credit in the song You Did It, behaving as so often like two little boys). Ultimately Eliza recognises he can’t help being what he is, but, more than that, he has a depth of character that the featherweight Freddie or the pliant Pickering haven’t. Most importantly, in this production, it is clear she realises she wants to be with him as an equal.

For his part, Higgins seems more stuck in his ways and shows less development, but he learns to feel love for another person, or as he puts it, I’ve Grown Accustomed To Her Face. Hadley Fraser delivers the song with great poignancy from the front of the stage, despite the difficulty of bringing emotion to songs that are virtually spoken, this in deference to the non-singing Rex Harrison who first played Higgins. Rex? Forget him. Hadley takes the crown.

As a love story, it’s highly unlikely and potentially offensive to feminists. The problem is exacerbated because the coming together of Higgins and Eliza was not the climax intended by Shaw. Quite the opposite: the professor was to be left a sad and sorry man by the newly independent woman. However, Rachel Kavanaugh, supported by her fabulous cast, makes it work by avoiding extreme portrayals and emphasising friendship and respect as the basis for their relationship. Well done, Ms Kavanaugh, You Did It!

My Fair Lady can be seen at Chichester Festival Theatre until 5 September 2026. Buy tickets directly from cft.org.uk

Paul was given a review ticket by the theatre.

Click here to watch this review on the YouTube channel Theatre Reviews With Paul Seven

A musical thriller from a stellar team

★★★★

Scene from The Third Man at The Menier in June 2023 — Sam Underwood and Natalie Dunne in The Third Man. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Theatre has become something of a vampire in recent years, roaming the dark auditoria of cinemas searching for films to turn into musicals. Sunset Boulevard is being revived; Groundhog Day is at the Old Vic; a version of Brokeback Mountain with music can be seen at Sohoplace; 42^nd Street, The Wizard Of Oz, Sunset Boulevard and Grease are all back this year; Mrs Doubtfire is on the way and of course Back To The Future, Moulin Rouge and The Lion King are already racking up long runs. Even so, one film I never expected to be adapted as a stage musical is The Third Man. Yet here it is at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory – and it’s a triumph.

I have a slight reservation about one aspect of the adaptation of The Third Man, which I’ll come to, but it’s far outweighed by the thrilling pace and the rollercoaster emotions it evokes. Wisely it sticks closely to Graham Greene’s original mystery story of love and betrayal with its reluctant hero, its twists and turns, and its shocks. I’ll try not to give too much away because you may not have seen Carol Reed‘s classic black-and-white film from 1949.

The creative team of Christopher Hampton, Don Black, George Fenton and Trevor Nunn are all as old or older than the film. Their new musical version is a distillation of all their talent and experience.

Let’s start with the music written by George Fenton. Among the hundred plus films and TV series for which he has written the score are Gandhi, You’ve Got Mail, The Jewel In The Crown and David Attenborough’s Planet series. Appropriate to a serious story, it leans towards the drama of Claude-Michel Schoenberg‘s music for Les Miserables or the starkness of Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera.

Mr Fenton is a brave man to tackle The Third Man because the film’s theme is one of the most famous ever written. In this musical version, he pays brief homage to the jangling zither-based hit but goes for a score that suggests danger, passion and anger. Played by a live nine piece orchestra, directed by Tamara Saringer, the songs enhance the story and reveal character, as they should in a good musical.

The legendary Don Black and Christopher Hampton, provide the tight book and sharp lyrics. There are even a couple of duets that Rodgers and Hammerstein would have been proud of.

The story is about a pulp fiction writer called Holly Martins, who arrives in Vienna at the end of World War 2, when it is occupied by the American, British and Russian soldiers. He’s there to do some work for an old school friend Harry Lime, only to find he has died in an accident. As the first act progresses, he becomes increasingly suspicious about the circumstances surrounding his death. The British military police meanwhile indicate to him that Lime was a bad lot.

The first act ends with an astonishing discovery and the show continues with even more shocking revelations and heightened drama.

Where the musical really stands out is in the feelings expressed by Holly and also by Lime’s lover Anna. Both loved Harry and can’t believe he would have been involved in anything truly bad. As the pair investigate Harry’s death, Holly falls in love with Anna and pursues her with reckless, puppy-like devotion, a sentiment she does not return.

Sam Underwood is a fine singer and actor who communicates sadness, frustration and infatuation as he searches for the truth and wrestles with his conscience. With his naïve, boyish determination, Holly could be a hero from one of his adventure novels

Natalie Dunne is strong as Anna. By dwelling on her character more than is the case in the film, the musical is able to show her in a nightclub singing songs that could have come out of The Threepenny Opera or indeed Cabaret, songs both sad and amusing- and indicative of her free-thinking character. And because we get to know her, the subplot of the triangle between Holly, Anna and Harry carries more weight.

Simon Bailey also impresses as a callous villain who commands devotion. And that’s my reservation about the adaptation: he is portrayed as more obviously nasty and not as full of fake charm as this key character was in the film.

The Third Man at The Menier. Photo: Manuel Harlan

Edward Baker-Duly and Jonathan Andrew Hume strike just the right note as righteous but ruthless military policemen Major Calloway and Sergeant Paine. Other characters are more in the way of caricatures but they are well acted- it’s a pleasure to see Derek Griffiths as The Porter. Rachel Izen is his wife, and Gary Milner, Alan Vicary, and Harry Morrison are Lime’s shady associates.

The design by Paul Farnsworth is full of atmosphere. The costumes in grey or other subdued colours add to the film noir effect. Rubble litters the edges of the stage floor, a dark alley or tunnel goes off to the side: You feel you are in a sinister city ravaged by war.

The Menier has been reconfigured so the audience is on three sides. Actors run up and down aisles, ramping up the excitement, and, thank goodness, the sight lines are kept free from obstruction. The simplest of furniture is enough to suggest effectively a hotel lounge, backstage at the nightclub, a flat, and even a ferris wheel gondola.

Getting us off to the best of starts is the opening scene where Holly wanders the dimly lit streets of Vienna at night, helped by dark expressionist lighting from Emma Chapman, and is surrounded by people begging. Straightaway we know we are in desperate times.

It’s a masterpiece of direction by Trevor Nunn, who brings so much that he has learned and practised in a long career that encompasses Les Miserables, Cats and the National Theatre production of Oklahoma! He constantly holds our attention, with a changing pace that switches from frenetic activity to tense conversation.

I must credit to Christopher Hampton whose previous plays and translations include Les Liaisons Dangereuses, Art, Sunset Boulevard and Florian Zeller’s The Father. I thought a musical adaptation of The Third Man couldn’t be done, but he and his team have done it.

The Third Man is performing at The Menier Chocolate Factory until 9 September 2023.

Paul paid for his ticket to see the final preview performance.

Watch this review of The Third Man at The Menier on YouTube