By Matt Robinson
As the latest revival of “My Fair Lady” continues to garner rave reviews in New York (and rightfully so!), it can be a bit easy to forget the great play from which this box office smash was born.
Fortunately, the tiny but talented team from Bedlam (http://bedlam.org) has taken it upon themselves to (to paraphrase Woody Allen) strip the music back out of MFL and turn it back into the theatrical gem it was (and is!).
Whittling the cast from scores to a handful and removing the music (which much of the sidelined but engaged audience appeared to be singing in their heads as the production unfolded), Bedlam gets to the root of the many issues in Shaw’s story, many of which are still relevant and deserving of consideration today.
In addition to “middle class morality,” the alleged role of women (which is made more enterprising with the hat-doffing gender-switching that helps keep this sparking and sparkling production alive), and the apparent ways of men, this production mixes the curried flavor of Colonialism (thanks in great part to Michael Dwan Singh’s engaging performance as both Mr. Doolittle and a sarangi), into a fluid production that literally involves the audience from the get go.
Even the stage set has been stripped down to a central table (that acts as the pre-show bar) and a set of wheeled chairs that become everything from the streets of London to the office of the prominent professor (Eric Tucker, who easily hhhhumainzes the hhhheavy hhhhanded hhhhypocitre HHHHHenry HHHHiggins) to the garden veranda of his matronly referee and sparring partner (Edmund Lewis).
Vaishnavi Sharma is great as the “good girl” Eliza Doolittle and passes herself off as an immigrant street seller as effectively as she does the polished project of the dynamic duo of Higgins and Colonel Pickering (offered with the booming baritone of James Patrick Nelson, that contrasts mightily with his turns as Mrs. Eynsford-Hill, a role that could have been expunged in the name of minimalism but allows for so much fun and frolic that it is too delicious to ignore). Her female foil is Grace Bernardo, who acts as a central pillar as the ramrod-straight Mrs. Pearce and also as the far more free and easy Clara Eynsford-Hill and Mrs. Higgins’ I-wish-I-were-free Parlour Maid.
So while great showtunes like “Get Me To the Church on Time” and The Street Where You Live” may live only in the minds and mouths of the audience in this production, Bedlam brings a madman’s sense of order to a story that still provokes and pokes fun today and deserves to be seen and heeded even if you do not leave the theater humming along.
www.centralsquaretheater.org
