Better than the movie!

Wednesday, December 3, 2025

How am I saying that? Because it’s true! We went to Theatre Latté Da to see My Fair Lady tonight and it was just stellar. ‘Enry ‘Iggins had a little bit a lateral lisp on his “s”. What?! The irony of having Higgins have a speech impediment was not lost on me. I thought it was very pronounced and that it would be an awful distraction. It was not. It receded very quickly (maybe it was nerves during the first song?) and I only heard it sparingly during the rest of the show. Eliza did not have nearly the Cockney accent Audrey Hepburn had, and that seemed a miss. Her “a” was an a instead of an i, and Keith and I missed it. Other than that, it was flawless.

The orchestra was two piano players – both on stage – both angled so we could watch them play. Brilliant. During the overture, they started alternating between songs, then finally jumped into playing 4 hands (that is what I am calling it, even though they were on two pianos). They were so good. I enjoyed watching them so much.

The set was cool. The pianos were stationary in the middle and the outer section rotated for different scenes. It was very effective and lovely.

Henry Higgins SANG! And sang well. Rex Harrison is classic and awesome with his non-singing singing, but the guy tonight really breathed life into the music. Eliza had some pipes too – no holding her back on her tunes. Freddy did NOT disappoint, although I hold him to a HIGH standard. He better be awfully good singing about Eliza’s street – and he was. He also played the bothersome Hungarian at the ball. He had on a great wig and a very different costume, but he was a very distinctive looking person and it wasn’t a stretch to notice him. During intermission, the man next to me was reading the program. He was first listed in the cast and my guy was shocked to read that he played both parts. Shocked. It was very cute. (The woman behind me was telling her friends not to watch Red One on Netflix – the Rock’s Christmas movie from last year. It is VERY dark, VERY creepy, and quite scary. It was not funny, and pretty disturbing. Man. I really liked that movie. And I laughed. Huh) Anyway, the supporting cast (playing a variety of people) were all great. Alfred P. Doolittle was so good. He was very, very good at physical comedy and he wove lots of humor into his dancing. Great singer, too.

They fixed the end of the show, too! After seeing the unsatisfactory final scene oh-so-many-times, this one was far better.

*******SPOILERS!!********

Eliza tells Henry she won’t be seeing him again when they are at his mom’s house and leaves. AND SHE DOESN’T COME BACK. He sings his song and goes home and is sad. The end. It was terrific.

I’m going to jump to some extraordinary news that we got today. Our friend who got the terminal diagnosis in May has been doing immunotherapy and today got a CLEAN SCAN!! The big tumor is gone. I cannot express how happy we are!!