During the intermission of tonight’s opening night performance of My Fair Lady at the Paramount, I ran into a friend who described the show as “beautiful”.  It’s a fitting word–the production is rather lovely, with such exquisite attention paid to detail that it was easy to imagine having been transported to a glamourized version of Edwardian England.  It takes more than well-crafted sets and pretty costumes to make a good show, however, and it’s in the most important parts of a musical that the play truly shines.

The story of the often artificial separation between the social classes, the struggles faced when attempting to rise above one’s station and the dangers of middle class morality remains as provocative and entertaining as ever.   The show’s many famous songs were sung rather well and the dances delight.  It was the acting of the principal cast that made it most rewarding.  Christopher Cazenove fully mastered the delicate balance of keeping Professor Henry Higgins as insufferable and arrogant as he needs to be while remaining just enough shy of being an ogre to add believability to the warm feelings so many of the characters have for him despite his purely academic interest in the social graces.  Dana DeLisa was completely credible as both Eliza Doolittle the “guttersnipe” flower seller on the dirty streets of London and Eliza Doolittle the fine lady at the Embassy Ball.  DeLisa infuses Eliza with such charm that I found myself worried for her welfare even though I know how the story ends. 

Walter Charles as Colonel Pickering, Professor Higgins’ partner in scheming, is a likeable chap and serves his role of being Eliza’s buffer against the worst of Higgins’ rages well.  It’s a shame that the part of Henry’s mother, Mrs. Higgins, is so small because Marni Nixon (who provided the singing voice for Audrey Hepburn’s turn as Eliza in the famed film version of the story) was most appealing.  The stand out performance of the show for me was another minor, but important character.  Tim Jerome as Eliza’s rapscallion father, “England’s most original moralist” Alfred P. Doolittle, nearly steals the show every time he takes the stage in a charismatic performance that displays his impeccable comic timing.  His cheerful, shameless amoralism when we first meet him, followed by his later complaints of being “ruined” by respectability neatly satirizes the hidden hypocracy of the “good manners” practiced by the less directly spoken members of the social classes higher than his.  

The only performance in the play that I found a bit lacking was Justin Bohon’s portrayal of Freddy Eynsford-Hill, the idle son of an upper crust family who falls for Eliza.  To be fair, the role is underwritten:  the sole purpose for Freddy’s existence is so that Eliza can ponder marrying him but it was a bit of a stretch to imagine Eliza caring enough for this bland boy that she’d give him any sort of serious consideration.   This is my only complaint and it’s not a very serious one.  Overall, this is a show worth seeing, one that truly lives up to its billing as the revival against which all revivals will be measured. 

The show continues through May 4.