Review: 'My Fair Lady' is 'igh entertainment

BARNSTABLE — "My Fair Lady" has always been a blind spot for me. Despite the fact that it was my high school crush's favorite musical and that the Oscar-winning film version is shown regularly on Turner Classic Movies, I'd somehow managed to miss it.

Thus, I felt excited as I settled into my seat at the Barnstable Comedy Club on Saturday ready to take in the play for the first time. Finally, I would find out who this Eliza Doolittle was and why everyone was so enamored with her.

If you go

What: "My Fair Lady"

Where: Barnstable Comedy Club

When: Nov. 9, 10, 16, 17 at 8 p.m. Nov. 11, 18 at 2:30 p.m.

Tickets: $20; seniors and students $18

Box office: 508-362-6333

I learned quickly, mostly because of Rebekah Terkelsen's mesmerizing performance. By the last act, I understood why even an uptight egghead like Henry Higgins, who vows to remain a bachelor forever, would eventually grow "accustomed to her face."

Still, Higgins is a tough nut to crack. As played by Peter Cook, he comes off as pompous, brilliant, wounded, and sometimes even charming when he's not trying so hard to keep up appearances.

He earns his living as a phoneticist but explains that his work is as much a hobby as a career. In other words, he has no joys or interests outside of phonetics and isn't looking for any.

Indeed, when he first sees Eliza selling flowers outside of the Royal Opera House, he barely notices her until she opens her mouth and starts spewing her lowbrow speech in a heinous cockney accent. Her inability to speak properly is both what repulses him and compels him to declare that he could pass her off as respectable in six months.

"I'll make a duchess of this dragon-tailed guttersnipe!" Higgins boasts.

His proclamation intrigues Col. Pickering (James Batzer), an equally esteemed gentleman who has studied Indian dialects and eventually persuades Higgins to take in the girl and teach her the ways of high society. In perhaps the play's funniest moment, Eliza appalls Higgins and his upper-crust companions at a horse race when she screams at her horse to "move your bloomin' arse!"

The basic plot should sound familiar even to fellow novices of the play like myself, as playwright Alan Jay Lerner based his book on George Bernard Shaw's "Pygmalion."

I think Shaw's classic strikes such a chord because it successfully lampoons British society without denying the humanity of either Henry or Eliza. To use E.M. Forster's terms, they function as "round characters" as opposed to the "flat characters" that inhabit so many lesser plays.

The performances by Terkelsen and Cook, undoubtedly guided by director Geralyn Moquin, are a credit to both Shaw and Lerner. Somehow we remain sympathetic to both characters even during their most intense outbursts.

Consider the scene where Eliza hurls Henry's slippers at him, causing him to lose his cool. For the first time, we realize there's a person behind that pompous veneer.

I also enjoyed Batzer's performance as Col. Pickering, perhaps the most loquacious gentleman in all of London. Despite his title and education, he's irresistibly clueless.

My only quibble with this production of "My Fair Lady" is that it overstays its welcome. If my watch was right, the show began just after 8 p.m. and finished at 10:50. That's a long haul, even for a play as entertaining as this one.

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