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10/04/2025
Frederick Loewe: My Fair Lady
Scarlett Strallen (Eliza Doolittle), Jamie Parker (Professor Henry Higgins), Malcolm Sinclair (Colonel Hugh Pickering), Alun Armstrong (Alfred P. Doolittle), Laurence Kilsby (Freddy Eynsford-Hill), Penelope Wilton (Mrs Higgins), Julia McKenzie (Mrs Pearce), Tom Ping (First Cockney, Footman), Connor Carson (Second Cockney, Angry Man), Tom Liggins (Third Cockney), Hal Cazalet (Fourth Cockney, Solo Tenor), Adam Vaughan (Harry), Sharif Afifi (Jamie), Maria Coyne (Angry Woman), Annie Wensak (Mrs Hopkins, Footman), Leo Roberts (Bartender), Deborah Crowe (First Maid), Wendy Ferguson (Second Maid), Matt McDonald (Charles), Will Richardson (Policeman), Charlotte Kennedy (Flower Girl), ‘My Fair Lady’ Ensemble, Sinfonia of London, John Wilson (conductor)
Recording: Royal Academy of Music (2‑6 April 2024) – 130’03
2 SACDs Chandos CHSA 5358(2) – Book & Lyrics in English
Damned if you do and damned if you don’t: My Fair Lady is a potential minefield. If you echo past performances you can be accused of lack of imagination, of being too reverential. If you venture too far the other way you are iconoclastic, ruining a classic. It may be no surprise to his many admirers, (if still a relief), that conductor John Wilson leads a fabulous new recording that is both historically informed and dramatically spot on.
This release has absolutely all the music, including appendices of numbers cut before opening night, and the exact instrumentation from the 1956 premiere (which has since been tweaked and changed). As Wilson says, ‘I think it is effrontery to try and improve what Lerner and Loewe did...We have a duty to set down as closely as we can their final thoughts on what they created’. The casting of the musicians is as painstaking as that of the singers, with period percussion instruments and dance‑band brass players. This is as close to the original performance as possible. The London Sinfonia is excellent, full of brio, and Wilson’s conducting brings out all the details you might often miss as you hum along with Loewe’s endless tunes that make you aware that the composer was product of the European operetta tradition, the family business before heading to America. The pot‑pourri ‘Overture’ is worthy of Lehár in its inventiveness, likewise the ‘Embassy Waltz’ with its elegant rubato, leading into the punchy ‘Entr’acte’. Just one example of Wilson’s skill: as Eliza descends the stairs before heading to the ball in Act I the music displays a beautiful and delicate interweaving of strings and woodwind, the sort of detail that can become overlooked in the theatre or cinema as the audience gasps with the magic of the moment.
And, should you fear that such historical reconstruction sounds potentially theatrically numbing, there is good news – the cast is superb. The performances of Julie Andrews onstage and Audrey Hepburn on film are enshrined in public memory, so the role of Eliza is potentially a poisoned chalice. Scarlett Strallen is a gifted and experienced performer and she nails it. For a start, her soprano is true and has the ability to soar through ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’, cleverly yet unobtrusively phrased, and also the personality to grump through ‘Just You Wait’. Many sopranos can sing those numbers with aplomb, but what Strallen brings in addition is Eliza’s resolute personality. She really gets the listener onside – tricky without visuals – and nails her changing voice perfectly. Her Cockney accent is not overplayed, and as her pronunciation changes Strallen develops vocal poise. She even deliberately slips up in ‘Show Me’, where the word ‘explain’ suddenly blurts out as an over‑rounded Cockney vowel.
Jamie Parker matches her perfectly as Higgins, another character with a ghost hanging over it, that of Rex Harrison’s outsized personality. Parker is relatively understated and sounds fresher than Harrison (though in fact he is only two years younger than when Harrison created the role), more ruminative, a slightly softer reading: still an insensitive chap but perhaps less of a deliberate bully. As required, Parker is an actor not a singer, so his moments of crooning reveal the man beneath the bluster. And, like Strallen, his phrasing is subtly effective, not least in ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face’, where his lapse into singing is a moment of self‑truth.
Malcolm Sinclair as Pickering has the grace to support Parker’s Higgins with a touch of humour and no pomposity. Penelope Wilton is a discreet Mrs Higgins, glimpses of impatience, her vowels clipped – ‘Asc’t’ for Ascot, a tone echoed by Eliza at the races, which she deems ‘ebsolutely thrilling’. Her father, played by Alun Armstrong, also resists over‑egging the Cockney pudding, and is particularly vivid in ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’. The excellent chorus particularly excels in that number, the sopranos really hitting the heights, and with a natural blend of London accents rather than the horror of too many ‘gawd blimey’ exaggerations. Julia McKenzie is luxury casting as Mrs Pearce. Lawrence Kilsby is a wonderfully wet Freddy, but whose singing voice is seductive and also full of perfect articulation – he can ‘hear a lark’, not ‘heara lark’. All smaller roles are strong cameos. The engineering is very fine – for example, the background noise in the pub is present but not overwhelming – and the balance between the spoken and sung voice is perfectly judged. A very strong addition to the catalogue and fans should snap it up. ‘It completely done me in!’
Francis Muzzu
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