2001 Original London Cast Recording - My Fair Lady [2001 London Cast Revival] (CD)

All Music Guide

In a personal reminiscence masquerading as liner notes, impresario Cameron Mackintosh, who staged the 2001 London revival of My Fair Lady, establishes his bona fides with regard to the work by recalling his attendance at the closingnight party of the first London production as a teen, his friendship with lyricist/librettist Alan Jay Lerner, and his staging of a 1979 revival that did not produce a cast album. He is right to emphasize his loyalty to the show because the 2001 production takes some notable liberties with what has long been regarded as a classic. My Fair Lady was staged definitively on Broadway in 1956; that version transferred to the West End in 1958 with the same principal cast members and was even carried into the 1964 film that Lerner also wrote and that starred Rex Harrison of the stage show. (The result is three albums featuring Harrison.) But a theatrical work, if it is to live, must be restaged, and the artists who restage it are entitled to interpret it in their ow...n ways. Indeed, it is one of the marks of a theatrical "masterpiece" (as My Fair Lady is billed on this album's cover) that it can survive the different versions to which it is subjected over time. Definitive as the original production (and the Original Broadway Cast album) may have been, My Fair Lady has been given many major revivals over the years, including five on Broadway through 1993 (of which only the 1976 version was recorded). In London, there were none between Mackintosh's 1979 mounting and this one in 2001, but there have been many minor productions, and a couple of interesting studiocast recordings, out of the U.K. Inevitably, later versions have had different casts, but for the most part they have considered the music sacrosanct, down to the orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett and Philip J. Lang (with dance arrangements by Trude Rittman). Not so this version. Here, William David Brohn has reorchestrated the score, and it is very different, from the first cue. Unfortunately, it is also overly busy and distracting, as it competes with the performers for attention and not infrequently wins the battle. When the cast is able to make itself noticed, the actors are usually engaging, particularly Jonathan Pryce, taking on the unenviable task of reinventing the role Harrison created. But then, he isn't the only one who has succeeded in making this part his own; Jeremy Irons did a creditable job in a 1987 studiocast recording. Oddly, distinctive a part as is that of Henry Higgins the elocutionist, it turns out to be one that allows for different interpretations, while the less defined role of Eliza Doolittle, the flower girlposingaslady, is harder to separate from Julie Andrews, who created it on Broadway. At least, few have succeeded, and Martine McCutcheon certainly does not here. She is much too tentative, and not vocally distinctive. The lesser roles of Freddy EynsfordHill and Alfred P. Doolittle are adequately covered by Mark Umbers and Dennis Waterman. Overall, the production and its resulting cast album suffer from a reinterpretation that is different largely for the sake of being different. - William Ruhlmann, All Music Guide Read more Less