Review: MY FAIR LADY at Stadteatern

My Fair Lady is one of the most famous musicals ever played since the opening in February 1956 and most of you can sing along to some of the songs in it like "The Rain in Spain", "I could have danced all night" and "With a little bit of luck". The story line about Professsor Higgings who bumps into the flowergirl Eliza and makes a bet with his friend to be able to make a lady of her.

Stadsteatern in Stockholm has modernized it a bit and the question is has they modernized it too much? Too some extend I do think so. I do like the new translation by Ulricha Johnson of the famous lyrcis by Alan Jay Lerners. The new translation has a fresh air over it, but still you can sing along in them which I think is important when you see a well know musical.

The sceneries of Maja Ravn is quite simple and plain as most of the time you need to imagine the settings, except from the office of Professor Higgins where there is a giant bookshelf. I do like the simple setting. Maja Ravn has also made the costums and they are not to my liking. The ensemble is most of the time dressed in dull cloths, beige or faded colours. Professor Higgins is supposed to be a bit stiff and dull so the cloths work on him. The only person with some colour is Eliza with a red leather jacket and very very short skirt. Even when she are getting more ladylike cloths they still keep the very short skirt length which doesn't make the transformation to a lady trustworthy. Even on the big all where she is introduced to the society she has a ball gown with too short skirt. A lady would not show her panties when she dances. The ensemble even has dull cloths at the Ascot scen. So the costums does not impress me at all and gives the musical a dull impression.

What makes this colourless interpretation of My Fair Lady still worth seeing is the cast. Professor Higgins is very well played by Rolf Lydahl. He has a very strong musical voice and his Higgins is boring, selfcentered, full of himself just like Higgins should be. Rolf Lydahl played Monsiur Firmin in Phantom of the Opera together with Peter Jöback 2016/2017. Doolittle is this evening played by Björn Kjellman, but he is the understudy for Magnus Uggla. Magnus Uggla is a very well know singer in Sweden and he is a bit a of character and it is very noticeable that they have created Doolittle for Magnus Uggla. Even some tones of one of his songs is intervened in "With a bit of luch" for example. But I must say despite that Björn Kjellman is great as Doolittle, the drunken playing father of Eliza.

Nina Zanjani is playing a strong Eliza who does not let neither her father nor Higgins tell her what to do at the end. In the beginning Eliza is speaking in a way so you can't hear what she says. I think it is quite boring that they have not let her speak in a dialect or accent, instead of just unhearable. I think they miss out on the character by doing so. But after sometime with Higgins she can speak very clearly of course. And Higgins wins his bet but he looses Eliza. Just as in George Bernhard Shaws Pygmalion she stays with Freddy. Freddy is played by Robert Noack another good musical artist and I do like his "On the streeets where you live". However I think they could have made a modern man to be more equal to Eliza. Now it is a bit strange that she falls for him and in the end says that she is going to be teacher so she can support him. I very much liked Lena-Pia Bernhardsson who played the mother of Professor Higgins. An old lady who gives all support to Eliza and not to Higgins when he treats her bad.

Stadsteatern in Stockholm has made several musicals and I would say this is not as good as their Sweeney Todd which was absolutely fantastic with Peter Jöback as Sweeney Todd, but not as bad as Blood Brothers. It is worth seeing, but it could have been a lot better with some better costumes and if they dared to give Eliza and Freddy more strength and be more modern and independent.

My Fair Lady opened the 8th of December 2017 and is scheduled till the 30th of May.