My Fair Lady Review Essay Thesis Example For Students

My Fair Lady Review Essay Thesis In this review, I will discuss a professional performance of the musical, ‘My Fair Lady’, that I saw performed in Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London. I will comment on scenery, costumes, choreography, sound, audience reaction, the actors’ interpretation of their characters, how well they interacted with the other characters and responded to what was going on on-stage. I saw an afternoon performance performed on a proscenium arch stage. The musical is set in London in 1910. The main characters are: Eliza Doolittle a commoner with a common accent that she wants to change so she can work in a flower shop, Professor Henry Higgins the man who teaches her and Alfred P Doolittle Eliza’s father, played by Dennis Waterman. The main storyline is that Eliza a flower girl at the time wants to work in a flower shop, but cannot due to her cockney accent. She turns to Prof. Henry Higgins to give her lessons in speech. He laughs in her face but is convinced by his friend Colonel Pickering that he could pass her off as a lady if he really wanted to. Higgins accepts the challenge and successfully passes Eliza off as a lady at many events including ‘a day at the races’ at Ascot, where she meets Freddy Eynsford Hill played by Mark Umbers, who follows her home, hoping to see her again. After a ball at the Embassy, Higgins and Pickering congratulate each other on their good work but forget Eliza. Hurt and angry, she rushes out of the house and runs into Freddy. He proclaims his love for her, but she demands that he stops talking about it. Meanwhile, her father, who has now become famous through his philosophies decides it time to marry the woman he has been with for years and spends his stag night on the town. Get me to the church on time. Higgins awakens to find Eliza gone, and after searching for her, finds her at his mother’s house where she’s gone for comfort. Eliza refuses his tentative offering of truce. Upset, Higgins returns home revolving on his thoughts of Eliza I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face and sits listening to recordings of her voice, when Eliza quietly enters as the curtain falls. All the scene changes were computerised. I could tell this because I could see the stage manager in one of the side boxes, controlling the lighting and scene changes. I didn’t like this because it reminded you that you were actually in a theatre, not in Covent Garden in 1910. The stage was like a conveyor belt, moving to bring the set on between scenes. At the end of each scene they’d move into the wings bringing the set for the next scene on. All other sets were flown in with ropes, except for the green at Ascot, which was a carpet, rolled on by two of the stage crew. I will discuss what I thought about the sets for each scene, The first scene was introduced during the overture. The audience saw a transparent curtain at the front of the stage covered in roses, which was appropriate as Eliza is a flower girl. During the overture, the roses gradually became by means of light a picture of the poor people of the time. This curtain became transparent to reveal a scene outside the opera house in Covent Garden. There were pillars stage left and right, moving back to up-stage, and this created depth, as though the stage were a long road. The cobbles were projected onto the stage floor using light and were also coloured to look even more realistic. I thought that this was a good trick to use to save effort creating a floor, although, you could sometimes see the cobbles on men’s hats. The set was then dressed with the Company who sat around as the poor people on boxes which were brought on using the ‘conveyor belt’ stage. At the end of the scene, the stage immediately started moving, the belt taking off these boxes to stage left and bringing on a bar from stage right. Other belts in front brought on tables and chairs from both sides. The pillars were flown off and hidden above the stage. The back wall for the next scene Public house was also brought in using this ‘belt’ method. I liked this method of scene change because it all happened in front of the audience’s eyes as we saw the scene gradually ‘fade away’ whilst seeing the set for the next being gradually built up. Queen Elizabeth EssayAlso, outside the public house for ‘A little bit of Luck’ was a song I enjoyed because of the dancing and the singing. The men attached dustbin lids to their feet and banged them on the floor like drums. At one point, the orchestra weren’t even playing and the cast were dancing around whilst playing percussion. It was a very energetic scene and it seemed very surreal because of the fact that the tuning on the dustbin lids was perfect and in key with the pots and pans that were being hit. The sound on the microphones was excellent. Everything was clear, and the singing sounded as though it was actually being projected by the actors themselves. The orchestra were all in time and sounded very professional. However, I found that they didn’t play much of an overture before the opening. It only contained highlights from about three songs and was too short. The audience reaction was approving of the performances. Eliza got a round of applause after the scene where she drops her H’s. Also, they seemed to laugh at the jokes actually written into the script as much as they laughed at the actors’ interpretation of the characters. The way Eliza spoke especially, as she was trying to be overly posh, and the audience knew she was just a common flower girl. I have chosen to talk about the performances of three actors. Alexandra Jay, who played Eliza, Jonathan Price, who played Higgins and Nicholas le Prevost who played Pickering. I thought that Alexandra maintained both accents that she used very well, though I felt that the last line she sang in ‘Wouldn’t it be loverly’ wasn’t common enough. It was sung before Eliza had lessons in diction. I think her interpretation of Eliza as a ‘lady’ was excellent. Eliza’s voice seemed like those around her, but her manner was not. The way she did this was very amusing to the audience. Alex managed the uncomfortable feeling Eliza would have had perfectly. She seemed stiff and not very confident in herself, which I thought was perfect. During her speech lessons, she was very funny. Her movements, including the way she did little things like sigh seemed very melodramatic as though she was frustrated. I think that the controversial relationship between Eliza and Higgins was shown very well between both the actors. For example, during the song, ‘Without You’, they’re saying how they’d cope without each other, but we know that really they can’t. I felt Alex was an excellent all rounder. Higgins’ accent was also excellent and maintained well even when singing, although I felt that he struggled in bringing the words across to the audience in some of the songs. His frustration in Eliza when she wouldn’t use the proper accent was brought across well. When he shouted at Eliza, he was right up next to her face and seemed to really ‘scare’ her. His body language was also excellent in showing his frustration, especially in ‘Why Can’t the English? ’ He threw his arms around a lot. Nicholas’ performance as Pickering didn’t stand out to me as much as the others. He just seemed to say the lines and not put any energy into his performance. The fact that he didn’t have a very big part contributed towards this, also. However, his performance in ‘The Rain in Spain’ was excellent and Pickering’s excitement was really brought across in his dance movements. This was a performance I liked as a whole anyway, because of the energy there was on stage. My overall impression of the show was that it was very good, but I feel as though it was let down at some points because of slips in the actors’ performances, but I felt that this was compensated by the other excellent performances at other times during the play. The story ends with a cliff hanger which I didn’t really like but had me thinking about the ending afterwards. It was very good and I would like to see it again or perform in it, mainly because I like the songs and the comedy in it.