28 ARTS
THE WEEK 28 May 2022
Drama
Musical: My Fair Lady
London Coliseum WC2 (020-7845 9300). Until 27 August Running time: 3hrs ★★★Lerner and Loewe’s 1956
musical My Fair Lady is so
“witty and well-crafted” that,
given enough resources, it’s hard
to mess it up, said Nick Curtis in
the London Evening Standard.
Bartlett Sher’s “Rolls-Royce of
a revival” at the Coliseum has
certainly had money spent on
it. “The sets are clever, the
costumes stunning, and there’s a
full-on Broadway dance routine
featuring showgirls, showboys
and everything in between” for
Get Me to the Church on Time.
But the production also feels
“fresh” and modern, with
“colourblind casting of proles
and aristocrats” and a sensational performance from Amara
Okereke as Eliza Doolittle. The first black actress to play Eliza,
she has an “effortlessly clear, full and expressive singing voice, and
can be meltingly soft, blazingly furious and beautifully still. She
owns the Coliseum stage, and the role.”
From the moment the overture begins, this My Fair Lady – a
hit in New York – is “daringly sumptuous” and “unashamedly
sensuous”, said Quentin Letts in The Sunday Times. It has a
“mission to entertain and enchant”, and its three-hour running
time flies by. It is the “definition of a comforting night out at the
theatre”, said Arifa Akbar in The Guardian – “it glides from one
well-loved song to the next on an elegantly twirling set”. Yet it is
oddly flat: “solid” and efficient rather than “spectacular”. Thereare no “knowing winks, twists
or clever allusions to the here
and now”, and there is no real
chemistry between Okereke’s
Eliza and Harry Hadden-Paton’s
unusually boyish Higgins.
Some of the choreography
lacks a “sense of self-determined
spontaneity”, said Dominic
Cavendish in The Daily
Telegraph, and the sets “can
look empty during the street
scenes and cluttered for the
interiors”. I found much to
enjoy, said Dominic Maxwell
in The Times – including some
fine supporting performances.
Malcolm Sinclair excels as
Colonel Pickering, while Vanessa Redgrave appears in an
“emotionally intelligent cameo” as Higgins’s mother. Overall,
though, the production is more diverting than transporting. It’s
a “very decent” My Fair Lady – but not a great one.Okereke as Eliza Doolittle: “owns the Coliseum stage and the role”The week’s other opening
The Father and the Assassin Olivier, National Theatre, London
SE1 (020-3989 5455). Until 18 June
Anupama Chandrasekhar’s gripping play tells the story of
Gandhi’s assassin, Nathuram Godse. It is “exhilarating to see
such big, bold political history commanding the National
Theatre’s largest stage” (Guardian).Harry Styles:
Harry’s House
Columbia
£11.99
For his third solo album, Harry Styles
has produced a series of “well-crafted”
1980s-influenced pop songs – any one of
which could be a hit single, said Alexis
Petridis in The Guardian. The “clipped
rhythms and icy electronic hook” of As
It Was instantly recall A-ha’s Take On Me.
Elsewhere, there are “booming drums,
Prince-y vocal interjections, bright staccato
synth stabs and the distinctive bwwwwoing
of the fretless bass”. It’s an impressive
record, and confirms that the singer, who
found fame as a member of the X-Factor-
formed boy band One Direction, has pulled
off the transition from “manufactured” teen
idol to grown-up pop star more successfully
than anyone since Justin Timberlake.
“The chief quality Harry’s House conveys
is charm,” said Will Hodgkinson in The
Times. Styles doesn’t offer “world-
changing” or even innovative pop. But you
always “get the impression that he really
does love the music he’s referencing” –
and here he combines it with enough
“pop pizzazz” to please his “core fanbase”
and “the oldies”. He’s “just got it right”.On Kevin Morby’s last album, 2020’s
Sundowner, the troubadour whittled down
his “freewheeling, Dylan-esque folk-pop
into scratchy, lo-fi musings” on his roots
in the American Midwest, said Jordan
Bassett on NME. On this superb follow-up,
he takes the opposite approach, delivering
an “enormous” record that is “epic in
sound and vision” – its “sprawling
Americana and gritty rock’n’roll taking
in the big themes” of life, death, love, sex
and family. Recorded in Memphis, with a
clear debt to Jeff Buckley, this is music of
“heart-bursting, life-affirming beauty”.
This “introspective” album consists of
“emotional ephemera set to song, culled
from lives lived and lives imagined”, said
Kat Bouza in Rolling Stone. Bookended
by tracks inspired by Morby’s parents, it
“alternates between worry and resignation,
frenetic manifestations of nervous distress
and quiet moments of humility”. It’s full of
beautiful moments, and is at its strongest
when Morby drops the soul-searching, and
instead embraces the “unpredictable chaos
of life and all its imperfection”.The Swiss oboist, composer and conductor
Heinz Holliger has long explored the
connections between creativity and mental
illness, said Andrew Clements in The
Guardian. His 2018 opera Lunea, about the
life of Austrian poet Nikolaus Lenau (1802-
1850), is partly based on fragments of text
the poet wrote during the last six years of
his life, in an asylum. This is not an easy
work; “it’s never straightforward. But it is
an immensely imaginative opera, full of
very beautiful, fragile music.” It is “hugely
varied and imaginative”, but its “textures
are always spare and chamber-like, the
mood always intimate yet intense”.
On this terrific recording, made live at
the Zurich Opera House, a “top-flight” cast
is led by Christian Gerhaher – the “greatest
German Lieder singer of our time” – and
is backed by the “consistently excellent”
singers of the Basler Madrigalsolisten, said
Sebastian Scotney on The Arts Desk. All
of them deliver Holliger’s “devilishly
complex” choral writing “superbly”. This
undeniably makes “extreme demands of the
listener”, but it is also intensely pleasurable.Kevin Morby:
This is a
Photograph
Dead Oceans
£11.99Albums of the week: three new releases
Heinz Holliger:
Lunea
ECM
£24© MARC BRENNER
Stars reflect the overall quality of reviews and our own independent assessment (5 stars=don’t miss; 1 star=don’t bother)