My Fair Lady at Chichester Festival Theatre – review

It’s remarkable that a venue that has become so renowned for its big summer musical has taken this long to stage Lerner and Loewe’s classic musicalisation of Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. What is even more astonishing is that Rachel Kavanaugh’s ravishing new production is the first in the UK ever to have been helmed by a woman – ironic considering the subject matter and its overtly misogynistic themes.

Kavanaugh has history with musicals at Chichester. Her fabulous Half a Sixpence was a dazzling success and made an overnight star of the then-unknown Charlie Stemp. Here, she brings together a crack creative team to create a perfectly crafted and effortlessly classy production that looks glorious on the Chichester stage.

Peter McKintosh takes advantage of the full width of the space in his sumptuous designs. The use of an enormous revolve to create picturesque tableaus and to showcase his elegant gliding drawing room set is a masterful use of the stage. Howard Harrison’s impressive lighting design captures light and colour quite magically, complementing McKintosh’s work.

Imaginative and animated choreography from Stephen Mear brings a level of exuberance and vigour. Joyfully executed and dazzlingly created dance numbers are created by Mear, particularly in the East End part of town. “I’m Getting Married in the Morning” and “With a Little Bit of Luck” are literal showstoppers.

Kavanaugh directs with real gusto but is always happy to slow down the pace at just the right moments. She laces flashes of romance that invite us to see what it is that draws the terrorised and bewildered local Londoner Eliza Doolittle to fall for the overbearing phonetics professor, Henry Higgins, her bullying captor. The violets that Eliza sells as a flower girl become a subtle motif of how it is actually she who is changing him. A beautiful instance of petals raining down on Higgins marks the moment that he realises how she has captivated him.

Hadley Fraser’s Higgins is all frenetic energy and obtuse chauvinism. As ill-mannered as he is charming, Fraser ramps up the spoilt child in Higgins as he stamps his feet and wails at not getting his own way. He sneers and growls as he prowls the stage like a snarling animal at times. His realisation of becoming “accustomed to her face” is genuinely lovely to watch. Fraser commands the comedy and fully commits to delivering his numbers in full voice.

Making her professional debut, Keziah Ibe is impressively in control as a warm and playful Eliza. Her guttural squalling as the East End flower girl is just as delicious as her beautifully sung “I Could Have Danced All Night”. Ben Culleton’s doey-eyed suitor Freddy sings “The Street Where You Live” with real bravura. He manages to keep Freddy on the right side of amusing rather than simpering.

Gary Milner makes a terrific splash as a strutting and rumbunctious Alfred P Doolittle. Reverse somersaulting his way into “middle-class morality”, Milner lights up the stage at every moment with his casual charm and his “natural gift of rhetoric”.

Elsewhere, Finty Williams is a delightfully wise and weary Mrs Pearce, Tony Jayawardena is an inordinately likeable and bumbling Colonel Pickering, and Belinda Lang enters her “haughty” era as an unequivocally candid Mrs Higgins.

Mckintosh’s costumes look sublime, and the band under the direction of Cat Beveridge sounds fabulous, but it is Kavanaugh’s thoughtful direction that really stands out. As Higgins sings “Why can’t a woman be more like a man”, he does so whilst the women of his household are dressing him. Kavanaugh strips back the inbuilt misogyny to reveal the dependence that Higgins has on the women in his life. As the final scene closes and he demands his slippers from Eliza, the wry smile from Ibe as she takes her place at his desk suggests that Higgins may have finally met his match. Chichester has a joyous hit on its hands.