My Fair Lady

 

Review by Paul Towers, 28/11/24

My Fair Lady book & lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner, music by Frederick Loewe

Directed by Nikolai Foster

Produced by Curve

At Curve til Saturday 4^th January 2025

Originally adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion My Fair Lady was first staged as a musical in 1956. Since then it has been revived and revived.

Professor Henry Higgins (David Seadon-Young) is a bombastic, hyperactive misogynistic expert in linguistics. Meeting up with fellow phonetician Hugh Pickering (Minal Patel) Higgins arrogantly bets his friend he can transform any girl so she can pass in high society. Flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Molly Lynch) hears this and takes him up on the challenge.

Eliza’s guttural squawking soon has the edges rounded off and she gradually discovers classiness.

An astonishingly talented cast incudes the awesome Cathy Tyson as Mrs Higgins, Djavan van de Fliert’s vocals as Freddie are amazing and the comic timing of TV regular Steve Furst lift this production sky-wards. Molly Lynch makes a perfect Eliza as she switches effortlessly from streetwise urchin earning pennies in Covent Garden to puncturing the pomposity of high society.

The very first wow moment comes when the set for the interior of Professor Higgins’ house swings across the stage. It is staggering and all praise must go to designer Michael Taylor. It folds in and out to display two staircases which the cast make full use of. But then it pivots back round and it is the dirty brickwork of Covent Garden.

Taylor is also responsible for costuming the production and while the urchin-like ensemble are straight out of Oliver it is in the society scenes that he really comes into his own. In the Ascot racing scene he has captured the iconic Dior look of the film.

When it comes to the vocal talents of the cast huge praise has to go to Molly Lynch’s Eliza and, as mentioned above, de Fliert’s Freddie also warrants mention. However, for sheer vocal dexterity Seadon-Young’s Henry Higgins takes some beating as he storms through songs like Why Can’t The English and the iconic The Rain In Spain.

All of this is superbly backed up by amazing the choreography of Joanna Goodwin (unsurprisingly known recently for Curve productions of Billy Elliot and Sunset Boulevard)

I could go on praising this production but I have run out of superlatives so it is enough to say grab a ticket if you can and get down to Curve before 4^th January for a gloriously uplifting piece of musical theatre.

Pics by Marc Brenner

www.curveonline.co.uk

https://ptheatre.blogspot.com/ 

Sheila's Island

 

Review by Paul Towers, 11/11/24

Sheila’s Island by Tim Firth

Directed by Jane Towers

Produced by Leicester Drama Society (LDS)

At The Little Theatre until Saturday 16^th November

We have all heard of the shenanigans that go on when a group of lads embark on a weekend away. But what about if a group of girls enrol on a team-building excursion?

Tim Firth (Calendar Girls) has given us a funny, poignant story of four ladies who are stuck on a fog bound island in the Lake District. Supposedly on a team-building outward-bound weekend it soon descends into Lord-Of-The-Flies country as the various cracks appear in the group dynamic.

Sheila (Alfi Levy) is supposed to be the team leader but is pretty ineffectual, relying, as she does, on her cryptic crossword skills to overthink the group’s instructions. Julie (Kat Seddon) has the largest rucksack filled, Mary Poppins-like, with an array of essential survival supplies (or so the man in the shop assured her). Denise (Mary Delahunty) is the group pessimist. In her eyes everything that can go wrong will go wrong and, to be fair, with Sheila in charge, it has. Fay (Kathryn Lenthall) is struggling with her mental health and some of the group worry she may do something stupid. Her way of coping is to embrace her new found love of God.

As the play opens the four women drag themselves, wet and weary, out of the sea and dry off. Immediately tensions start to show as Sheila is rightly blamed for their being lost and fog bound. From then on it is a case of trying get by with the meagre supplies they have rescued from the lake.

The set by Steph Nicholls expertly depicts the water’s edge and trees.

Sheila’s Island is at The Little Theatre until Saturday 16^th November

 

Pics: Jenny Harding

https://thelittletheatre.co.uk/

https://ptheatre.blogspot.com/