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My Fair Lady

Cross-cultural venture

MY FAIR LADY
National Theatre Production
Director: Trevor Nunn
Transferring to Drury Lane, London

There are certain personality types which cringe at the very idea of a musical. If present at a performance, they would wait in an absolute agony of embarrassment for the first note of the orchestra to strike up and the dialogue to move into the initial song. 'people don't do that in real life', they complain.

Indeed they do not. But the point of the music is to expound what is inaccessible to real life observation - namely, the inner thoughts and emotions of a character. Songs take us into the heart, and the heart is God's concern, 1 Samuel 16.7.

In many ways Lerner and Lowe's My Fair Lady is the supreme example of the popular musical and it is a delight to see it return to the London stage. Based on George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion, it tells the story of how an expert in linguistics, Professor Higgins (played by Jonathan Pryce) and his friend Colonel Pickering, take a flower girl, Eliza Dolittle, from the streets of Edwardian London and seek to make her into a society 'lady' through teaching her to speak 'properly.' In effect it is a cross-cultural venture which has numerous lessons concerning the frustrations and fears involved in personal transformation. A Christian involved in God's great commission to convert the world will find food for thought here.

Trevor Nunn's attention to detail makes the National Theatre's production, which has been running since Easter, a magnificent and sensitive spectacle. The portrayal of low-life London is rougher and harsher than that of the classic film version, but adds to our understanding of the class divide. Dennis Waterman as Alfred Dolittle, Eliza's dustman father, is perfect.

Antipathy to the church

It is this character who unfolds the antipathy of many of the 'have-nots' of society towards the church. The song, 'With a little bit of luck', is almost a point by point repudiation of Christian guidelines for behaviour. 'They're always throwing goodness at you / but with a little bit of luck a man can duck!' While the rich regard morality and the church with indifference, the poor see it simply as a manipulative institution foisting middle-class morality on them. 'Do you have no morals?' Higgins asks Eliza's father. 'I can't afford 'em guv'nor' is the reply. Has the church learned anything since the days of Shaw? How often are we known as moralizers rather than gospellers? How often the church still expects people to behave like Christians before they are Christians?

Ostensibly the story is of the rise from vulgarity to respectability of a Covent Garden flower girl, but the person who has to travel the furthest in this tale is actually Professor Higgins. Higgins the teacher becomes the pupil and has to learn that the defining feature of a person is not the accent with which they speak, but the manner in which they are spoken to. Eliza perceptively remarks that it is Colonel Pickering's treatment of a flower girl as if she were a duchess which has truly changed her, not the ability to pronounce her vowels correctly. It is love and kindness which crosses cultures and speaks to the heart. It is the message of love which changes the heart, as God does in the gospel.

JEB
John Benton