It’s loverly
A splendid new production of My Fair Lady lit up the stage at San Francisco Playhouse
My theory about My Fair Lady is that the success of the show rests on just how much Henry Higgins you can tolerate. If the sexism, the arrogance, the preening self-regard are cranked up even a tad too high, then the piece all comes tumbling down. Higgins’ eleventh-hour turnabout feels false and unearned, and you spend the final minutes thinking, “Yeah, grow accustomed to this, buddy.”
But when an actor and director conspire to keep the character’s distasteful qualities at no more than a high simmer — as Adam Magill and Bill English, respectively, do in the superb new production of the classic Lerner and Loewe musical that opened Wednesday night at San Francisco Playhouse — then the moral and emotional flow of the drama finds its course unerringly. Higgins’ project of transmuting Eliza Doolittle from a Cockney street urchin into a posh girl through the ineffable magic of phonetics remains utterly insane, of course, but now it takes on the air of a quixotic, semi-tragic quest. And if Higgins has some spark of detectable humanity about him from the beginning, then his final softening really means something; it’s not the divine comeuppance that Eliza has dreamt of as early as “Just You Wait,” but rather the inevitable flourishing of his long-stifled inner angels.
This is, admittedly, a theory based on a vanishingly small sample size. I must have seen the Oscar-winning Rex Harrison-Audrey Hepburn movie at some point over the years, but I can’t call any of it easily to mind, and it’s certainly not an important text for me. A few years ago, I fled at intermission from a dreary touring production at the Orpheum, which may have done more than anything to influence my current attitude. (Here’s Lily Janiak waxing rhapsodic over that production, as further evidence that she’s far smarter about this stuff than I am.) I do like a Frederick Loewe melody, but the joy, the humor, and the emotional translucency of this production far outstripped my curmudgeonly expectations.
For one thing, the Playhouse cast is pretty much flawless, top to bottom. In addition to Magill, who lets his charisma just peek out around the corners of Higgins’ crusty misogyny, Jillian A. Smith makes a radiant Eliza, with a semi-feral cunning in the opening scenes that blooms over time into a wondrously developed generosity of spirit; you can feel in her performance what turning into a duchess truly amounts to, and how little it has in common with Higgins’ crabbed conception. Brady Morales-Woolery, nimble and charming as ever, is a sprightly Colonel Pickering, Jomar Tagatac brings robust comic presence to the role of Alfred P. Doolittle, and Jill Slyter, as Higgins’ mother, effortlessly steals every scene she’s in. Then there’s Heather Orth as Mrs. Pearce, the housekeeper, who virtuosically conveys more emotion (scorn, surprise, sympathy) with a single well-judged glance than most actors can in a dozen line readings.
And although the production hits all the requisite marks for a Broadway musical — including buoyant musical direction by Dave Dobrusky and fleet choreography by Nicole Helfer that makes the tiny Playhouse stage feel eminently full-sized — English keeps poking and prodding the piece to bring up its subterranean layers. This doesn’t always pay off; in particular, there’s a half-hearted attempt to introduce a gay subtext between the two male principals, which simply means that once or twice Pickering will suddenly pause and look into Higgins’ eyes as if to say “kiss me, you fool” before everyone goes back to whatever they were doing before.
But the overall dramatic arc remains thoughtful and probing throughout, in ways that go beyond simple excuses for a song and dance. What does it mean, English asks us to consider, for a person to be transformed into a different version of what they already were or might have been? What does it mean for them to do it at someone else’s behest? And why can’t a man be more like a woman?
My Fair Lady: San Francisco Playhouse, through Sept. 13. www.sfplayhouse.org.
Elsewhere:
Lily Janiak, San Francisco Chronicle: “In other productions, when Eliza and Henry face off over his callous treatment of her, the subtext is that each wants the other to admit a weakness that’s at least partly sexual. This time, while that flicker never entirely dies, it’s more about the fun of debating an equal in intellect and fearlessness.”
Jean Schiffman, Bay City News: “English’s focus is on Eliza, and Smith easily accesses a full range of emotions, through song, dialogue and movement, to explore her character’s complex journey.”
Steve Murray, Broadway World: “Henry Higgins represents a confirmed bachelor, terribly afraid of women and clueless to their desires and needs. Adam Magill plays him with the callousness required without becoming reprehensible.”
Another grand night for singing
The Merola Opera Program’s summer season, which began last month with “A Grand Night for Singing,” continued on Thursday with the traditional showcase known as the Schwabacher Summer Concert. The premise here, and a perfectly sound one it is, is that we get to hear the program’s young artists perform extended scenes from the operatic repertoire — not exactly solo arias (though one or two of those might sneak in) and not full-scale works, but something in between.
Two things matter for an event like this: the quality of the singers, and the choices about what they sing. This year’s Merolini seem to be full of promise, and of the more than two dozen artists who contributed to this event, many shone forth in ways that left me eager to hear more from them. But I do have some complaints to make about the programming.
Suppose, hypothetically, that you and I were to put our heads together and ponder this question: Out of six selections in a 2½-hour operatic showcase, how many should be excerpts by Donizetti? My opening bid would be zero, because I have certain quirks of taste and that is one of them. (One day I promise I will write my “Donizetti? Gimme a break!” column, but today is not that day.) You would laugh indulgently at my folly and counter with two, and we would settle amicably on one. Problem solved! Would we go as high as four? 66% of the entire evening’s lineup? Of course we wouldn’t; that way madness lies. And yet that’s exactly what transpired on Thursday, as if there were no other composers whose music was worth exploring.
It may or may not have been coincidence that the high points of the program, conducted by William Long and neatly directed by Merola alum Omer Ben Seadia, were the two non-Donizetti scenes. Soprano Alexa Frankian and mezzo-soprano Sadie Cheslak joined forces for a potent account of the long final scene from Puccini’s Suor Angelica, culminating in Frankian’s heart-wrenching “Senza mamma.” And soprano Ariane Cossette emerged as the evening’s chief luminary with a magnificent rendition of “Tacea la notte placida” from Verdi’s Il Trovatore that combined beautiful long-breathed phrases and pinpoint vocal fireworks in a virtuosic display.
It's not that Donizetti stank up the joint, either; there was just too much of him. Elio Bucky, the stage director among this year’s Merolini, helped a long scene from Don Pasquale find its feet with plenty of nimble comic business (let’s face it, a notary with a laptop is always funny). The entire ensemble lent full flavor to the vocal writing; there were particularly strong contributions from soprano Chea Kang, whose Norina combined dexterous vocalism with brilliant comic acting, and from bass John Mburu in a wonderfully extroverted turn as Don Pasquale. Next year, hopefully, we’ll get a little Mozart, some Britten — hell, I’d go for Massenet if I had to. I’m not proud.
Elsewhere:
Michael Strickland, Civic Center: “This year’s outing from director Omer Ben Seadia at the SF Conservatory of Music featured the strongest vocal roster and best staging that I have ever encountered at these concerts.”
Cryptic clue of the week
From Out of Left Field #276 by Henri Picciotto and me, sent to subscribers last Thursday:
Delicacy from German city, if looking west (7)
Last week’s clue:
Feed prepared in hours (7)
Solution: NOURISH
Feed: definition
prepared: anagram indicator
in hours: anagram fodder
Coming up
• “Secret Byrd”: William Byrd, one of the great musical voices of the English Renaissance, was an observant Catholic in a country where Catholicism overlapped with treason. Much of his sacred music, consequently, was probably performed in private and highly controlled settings. The British vocal ensemble The Gesualdo Six and the Bay Area’s Wildcat Viols, presented by the San Francisco Early Music Society, will conjure up this milieu with a candle-lit immersive performance of Byrd’s Mass for Five Voices. July 17-18, Grace Cathedral. www.sfems.org.
Admit it, you wouldn't REALLY mind a honeyed rendition of "Una furtiva lagrima" or spectacular "Lucia" mad scene all that much - I wouldn't myself, although....the quantity of Donizetti is exactly why I didn't schlep to SF for this show.