That's a song from My Fair Lady. It's also one of the things I was thinking during last night's one-performance-only of My Fair Lady at the Hollywood Bowl: Wouldn't it be loverly (or even lovely) if there were more of a middle-ground between an all-out, open-ended, high-budget Broadway or Broadway-style production…and a quickie "concert" presentation? Musical theater seems too often trapped in the extremes. Either a show goes all out, spends millions and everyone commits a year or two of their lives to it…or the actors do it very few times (sometimes, once) with bare bones sets and costumes. John Lithgow played Henry Higgins this evening and he was…well, I wouldn't say he was superb.
He stumbled over a few lines and forgot a few. At one point, he answered a question before it was asked and occasionally found himself a few beats behind in the songs. But for a one-time-only outing with minimal rehearsal, he was amazing. And if he had a few weeks of performances in the part, he'd have people saying he was as good as or maybe even better than Rex Harrison. Even as it was, it was one of the best evenings of musical theater my friend Carolyn and I have experienced in a long time.
What you see in these "concert" performances is, in essence, the first out-of-town tryout of a production. Tonight was the first time this cast had done the show before a live audience and, sadly, the last. Melissa Errico played Eliza Doolittle, Paxton Whitehead played Colonel Pickering, Kevin Earley played Freddie Eynsford-Hill, Lauri Johnson played Mrs. Pearce, and Rosemary Harris played Mrs. Higgins, and they were all good. But the real surprise was the guy with the least experience of any of them in musical theater: Roger Daltrey got every laugh there was to get in the role of Liza's father, the inestimable Alfred P. Doolittle. Obviously, director Gordon Hunt deserves a lot of credit for all of this but Mr. Daltrey's natural stage presence and style — so evident in his "other" musical career — sure served him well in this one.
I have a number of friends who've been in the stripped-down productions that groups like Encores and Reprise! do, where they have sparse rehearsals and a very limited number of performances. They all report a frustration when it ends because they're still growing in the roles and the show is generally getting better and better when, all too sudden, it's over. As an audience, we ought to be frustrated, as well. I'd love to see what John Lithgow could do as Henry Higgins with a little more chance to "find" himself in the part. I'd love to see this production done with real sets and higher-budget art direction. I'd especially love to be able to recommend you see it, but you can't. One shot and it's over.
Oh, well. It was nice while it lasted.