Edinburgh’s “My Fair Lady” Is “Fully Cuckoo”
I would love to be in Edinburgh right now, for the Edinburgh Festival. But oh how I would avoid this “My Fair Lady” if I were there. As The Telegraph reports: ‘Whatever cherished memories you have of Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 musical, “My Fair Lady” – itself a reworking, of course, of Shaw’s “Pygmalion” – are best left at the door, the better to steal in like something muffled or mis-remembered. The accent here is on dreaminess and disjunction, on a playfulness that defies you to fathom its rules. Communication comes through snatches of the score and via a range of other sources, too – Wagner, Ryan Adams, George Michael. The show hails from Theatre Basel, baby, not Broadway. It’s fully cuckoo.’ I can’t believe the Lerner and Loewe estate gave permission for any portion of the show’s music to be used alongside such a sonic mishmash. Call out the lawyers!
