| THEATRE
From the moment the overture
starts swirling around the
Coliseum, My Fair Lady is
daringly sumptuous. Swooping
melodies? Painted backcloths?
Vast Edwardian hats and rich
lighting? This Bartlett Sher
production is unashamedly
sensuous. Such things were
once the reason we went to
West End shows, handing over
our precious spondulicks to
be transported, rather than
lectured at, and here Sher
restores a mission to
entertain and enchant.
When Lerner and
Loewe turned
Shaw’s Pygmalion
into a 1950s musical
they arguably drew
much of the sting
from the plot’s politicsof chauvinist control.
Professor Henry Higgins’s
desire to teach the Cockney
flower girl Eliza Doolittle how
to speak proper became so
obviously a device for musical
fantasy that only a determined
misery could bridle at Higgins
singing A Hymn to Him. Even
so, in this day and age, as
a trim Harry Hadden-Paton
trills about women being
“exasperating, irritating,
vacillating, calculating,
agitating, maddening and
infuriating hags”, it feels bold.
Three hours fly by as
Hadden-Paton’s Higgins and
his chum Colonel Pickering
(the always watchable
Malcolm Sinclair) turn Amara
Okereke’s Eliza into a lady.
Dodgy amplification and
some overacting by Okereke
make the first scene hard to
hear. Things soon settle down
and the classic songs roll in:
Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?, The
Rain in Spain, I Could Have
Danced All Night, With a Little
Bit of Luck etc, played by the
English National Opera
Orchestra. The singing
is fairly decent, one
exception being
Stephen K Amos as
Eliza’s dad. Get that
man a voice double!
Higgins is a pig to
Eliza, yes, but he’s aQUENTIN
LETTS
My Fair Lady
Coliseum, London WC2
HHHHGrease
Dominion Theatre, London W1
HHThe Ministry of Lesbian
Affairs
Soho Theatre, London W1
HHHJust loverly
DANCE
pig to everyone. He’s an
academic wrapped up in his
work. Pickering, the Watson
to his Holmes, shows that
not all phoneticists need be
swine. He catches sight of
Eliza all dressed for the ball
and tells her, after a recoil of
astonishment, that she is
beautiful. It is a sweet,
avuncular moment. Oh, and
Vanessa Redgrave plays the
Mother Higgins. You don’t
often see such vintage
upstaging. In its own way it^
is magnificent. At curtain call
she comes on and dementedly
waves her surgical crutch in
the air like a football rattle,
nicking all Sinclair’s applause.
Despite its title, Grease is
a soapy affair. The pop hits
— Summer Nights, Greased
Lightning, You’re the One That
I Want — are undeniable.
They are belted out efficiently
and there is energetic
choreography by Arlene
Phillips. But the enterprise
has a formulaic tang. For the
umpteenth time we are in a
1950s American high school
and there are Brylcreem
hairdos, diner stools, a school
prom and the inevitable
wheel-on automobile. Peter
Andre has a small part. By that
I mean he plays the local-
radio DJ. Olivia Moore does
well as clean-living Sandy, the
Olivia Newton-John role. She
carries off the final-scene
leather pants with aplomb.
Dan Partridge’s Danny Zuko,
her love interest, feels more
Grange Hill than Rydell High.
The evening ends with a
megamix of the hits, the
audience being encouraged to
bop and take selfies. I fled.
The Ministry of Lesbian
Affairs gives a rare, wry,
affectionate view of an
overlooked minority: those of
us who sing in amateur choirs.
Iman Qureshi’s play follows
the fortunes of members of
an all-lesbian choir hoping
to be selected to perform
at London’s Pride festival.
Imagine the film Brassed Off
with sapphic characters plus a
dollop of trans debate. Shuna
Snow’s Connie, like many
choir mistresses, is eccentric,
imperious and loveable. I know
about these things: my wife
runs our village church choir.
The one unrealistic thing
about this charming play?
They are too tuneful. There is
not a single groaner. cFor theatre tickets, visit
thetimes.co.uk/ticketsFair ladies Vanessa Redgrave
and Amara OkerekeTHE
CRITICSMARC BRENNERA daringly sumptuous My Fair Lady is a
reminder of why we go to West End shows
K
yle Abraham’s devo-
tion to dance began
early. “I got kicked
out of Catholic school
on the first day
because I was danc-
ing,” he says, laughing. “I was
in first grade and had just got
penny loafers. I kept dancing
and they kicked me out and I
had to go to a different school.”
That harsh Pittsburgh
school didn’t put Abraham off.
He has become one of our
most exciting choreographers,
working with Beyoncé and Suf-
jan Stevens and setting up his
dance troupe, AIM, “to create a
body of dance-based work that
is galvanised by black culture
and history”.
AIM is returning to the UK
with two recent hits — Requiem:
Fire in the Air of the Earth at
Sadler’s Wells and An Untitled
Love at Edinburgh Interna-
tional Festival. They draw on
American black experience,
but in different ways. Abra-
ham, 44, says: “An Untitled
Love is like a rom-com and
Requiem is like a Christopher
Nolan film or The Matrix — one
of the good ones.”
An Untitled Love is rooted in
this world, its “love and joy and
community”. Set to D’Angelo’s
soul music, it is infused with the
spirit of the Eighties and Nine-
ties and Abraham’s memories
of his parents dancing in their
house. “There’s a lot of nostal-
gia in there for sure,” he says.
“I’m thinking about being a lit-
tle boy, seeing my parents and
their friends — the way that
they shared joy.
They would
show up and
show out, with
their outfits and
everything. I had
such an admira-
tion for my elders
that I wanted to
honour them.”
While developing
the piece, he asked
his dancers “to
interview their
parents or grand-
parents or a couple
they admire”.
When I previously
spoke to Abraham, I asked
him how much he enjoyedthe creative process. He pulled
up his jumper to reveal a
T-shirt of the Smiths, the mis-
erabilist’s band of choice. He
admits to “being a pretty mel-
ancholic person at times — I
have a certain obsession with
death”, so it’s perhaps unsur-
prising that Mozart’s Requiem
called to him. He invited the
electronic music producer Jlin
to feed into the work, and
considered “different ideas of
reincarnation and afterlife.
Mythology, folklore, black
futurism, all those things
started to come up for me.”
One American review of
Requiem noted how Abraham’s
dancers hit the floor: “You may
never have seen collapses like
these... like an agitated stream
— or scream.” It’s less trau-
matic than it sounds, Abraham
argues. “Yes, we are still dying
and losing our lives when we
shouldn’t be, but this is about
the rebound or rebirth. To get
to conversations around the
afterlife there has to be death.
But it becomes a bit like the
fun redundancy of ‘Oh my
God, they killed Kenny!’ from
South Park — moments that are
over the top on purpose.”
Abraham continued work-
ing through the pandemic lock-
downs — he made When We
Fell, a beautiful, wintry film for
New York City Ballet, and came
back busy. “I did have a very
productive last two years,” he
admits, “but I don’t know if I’d
want it to happen again.” He’s
ready to pause and reset; pre-
paring to toss his youthful jour-
nals and trying “to figure out
what I want to do. How can I be
inspired? Where do I feel seen
and heard? And when do I
need to be quiet?” cDavid JaysRequiem is at
Sadler’s Wells
May 31 to Jun 1;
An Untitled
Love is at
Edinburgh
International
Festival Aug
20-21‘IT’S ABOUT JOY’
The prolific choreographer Kyle Abraham
says his new work is like a rom-comANDY PARSONSRebirth
Kyle Abraham18 22 May 2022