My Fair Lady - London Coliseum / UK & Ireland Tour

If they’re wise they won’t show it anywhere until after the tour #anythinggoes

As my second show today, I arrived at the box office 6pm and enquired about day seats thinking I’d get somewhere in the balcony so late in the day, but was really happy when offered Stalls F27 for £29.50, especially when I saw on the coliseum ticket page that the seat normally goes for around £150 based on a similar Wednesday night. I’d definitely recommend trying to get cheap tickets this way as there where plenty of unsold seats in the stalls around me tonight and looking further down the line it seems to be a similar situation for most remaining shows of the run.

Having a look at the cast board showed that a fair few of the main cast where absent from the show tonight (Malcolm Sinclair, Maureen Beattie and Sharif Afifi present). We had Paul Westwood as the Henry Higgins, Rebekah Lowings as Eliza, Adam Vaughn as A. Doolittle and Heather Jackson as Mrs Higgins.

Having seen MFL during its run at the TRDL all those years ago with Alex Jennings, I was interested to see how TLC version faired. Whilst enjoying tonight’s show, I didn’t cone away thinking it was a great production. The ENO orchestra sounded fine from where I was sat but where the sound issue was a problem was from the cast who seemed really quiet for a lot of the show and when combining with the orchestra during the songs, it really was a challenge to hear them.

With the staging, I’d agree with a lot of other board members comments that the set seemed a little small to fill the large coliseum stage. Whilst the house looks impressive up close having only seen it briefly during a tour of the LIncoln Centre a few years ago, it might look better on a smaller stage during its tour.

Adam Vaughn was ok as Alfred in his two big songs. I did love Maureen Beattie as Mrs Pearce and Malcolm Sinclair as Pickering. Rebekah sounded great as Eliza though I wasn’t convinced by Paul Westwood as Higgins and his relationship with Eliza. I found Alex Jennings a much better Higgins who had a bit more depth to the character.

I absolutely adored the costumes from Catherine Zuber. Really great designs and looked fabulous, especially during the Ascot scene.

Certainly not having a sell out auditorium didn’t help tonight. I just felt that during the big crowd pleaser of “I’m getting married in the morning “ should of got the audience going but there just seemed a real lack of any energy in tonight’s audience. Overall it seemed a really lethargic audience tonight.

Was Vanessa back?

I'm starting to think that Vanessa went to a farm where she can play all day with other dames

Considering she could barely walk the few performances she did, this isn't surprising.

Considering how much stamina one needs to play eight shows a week, even if only in half a dozen scenes, it's hardly surprising that a lady of 85 is having difficulty. It is a shame if anyone bought tickets based on her name alone, but I love Harry and Amara so I wouldn't complain too much about missing her.

💀

As Pickering would say, it's "common knowledge" that she contracted a certain something.

That's great news, and I'm sure ms Redgrave is a performer who doesn't take missing a show lightly.

And here come the dad jokes...

I did! My other half and I were hoping to see Amara as we won’t be able to catch the production again before it closes but I can say personally I definitely wasn’t disappointed by her Eliza! She was charming and has a lovely voice, I couldn’t tell she was the understudy at all.