With a Little Luck

More than 40 years after it first opened here, “My Fair Lady” is once again the talk of theater land. It seemed impossible that any new production could emulate the excitement of the 1956 original, which arrived in London in 1958, starring England’s Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl coached by Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison) to modify her vowel sounds and pass herself off as a society lady.

Yet it has happened.

The National Theatre, which in recent years has specialized in reviving classic American musicals like “Guys and Dolls,” ’Carousel” and “Oklahoma!,” has done the trick again with “My Fair Lady’-Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion.”

The production opened to rave reviews, and is already London’s hottest ticket: It is sold out for the duration of its run at the National through June, when it will transfer to a West End theater.

This time around, Eliza Doolittle is not being played by an unknown-at least to British audiences. Martine McCutcheon, 24, was a star of the long-running BBC soap opera “EastEnders,” set in a working-class east London community; she played a long-suffering barmaid named Tiffany Mitchell. When her character was written out of the series two years ago, it made headlines in Britain’s tabloid press. McCutcheon then embarked on a singing career, and had two hit albums and a No. 1 hit single, “Perfect Moment.” Still, apart from a spell at drama school, she had no real stage experience.

Trevor Nunn, artistic director of the National Theatre, who is directing “My Fair Lady,” has a long track record with musicals: He directed “Cats” and “Les Miserables” in the West End and on Broadway. So why did he choose McCutcheon as Eliza?

There were obvious reasons. First, McCutcheon can act. Second, she can sing.

But there is a third reason, one that points to dramatic problems with earlier versions of “My Fair Lady’-both the stage production starring Andrews and the 1964 film, starring Audrey Hepburn. Those two actresses spoke English with genteel accents, and thus had to assume Cockney accents for the earlier scenes of the musical, before Eliza has been tutored by her mentor, Higgins. McCutcheon, on the other hand, was raised in a working-class London community, and naturally speaks in a Cockney accent. So the question for audiences is whether McCutcheon can speak in “posh” tones and thus gain entrance to polite society. Nunn views McCutcheon’s upbringing as a trump card.

In an interview before the opening of “My Fair Lady,” Nunn observed: “It’s wonderful finally to have the problem of Eliza the right way round. Martine’s instincts are the instincts of language she learned growing up in the East End. Therefore, her task is an elocutionary one. And that’s the right struggle for her to be attempting.”

Andrews and Hepburn, added Nunn, “had to be taught a form of Cockney speech, and sometimes the result is you can hear they’ve been taught. So all we’re waiting for is for them to drop it and reveal their real voice. With Martine in the role, there’s dramatic tension.”

Certainly the critics seem to think so. Apart from relishing the extraordinary number of memorable songs in “My Fair Lady” (‘On the Street Where You Live,” ’With a Little Bit of Luck,” ’Wouldn’t It be Loverly,” ’I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face’), they solidly approved of McCutcheon’s performance, which has been interrupted by a series of illnesses.

“She may be funny in the early scenes of squawking indignation and tearful terror,” noted Charles Spencer of the Daily Telegraph, “but as she grows, McCutcheon displays a grace, a generosity of spirit and a vulnerability that are deeply affecting.” John Peter of the Sunday Times called McCutcheon “a young artist oozing energy and confidence from every pore, with the kind of naturally magnetic stage presence which signals the birth of true talent.”

These notices represent even more of a triumph for McCutcheon than they seem. Although she is well-known as a TV soap actress and has high visibility here as a pop singer, it is fair to say she has never been subjected to anything like the disciplines involved in rehearsing for “My Fair Lady.”

The National imposes a rigid, almost scholarly approach to reviving musicals. Nunn began rehearsals with a scrupulously close investigation of the text. He ordered the cast to read the book of Lerner and Loewe’s musical, and then its source material, “Pygmalion.” Much earnest discussion followed about the suffragette movement, Fabian socialism and the sexual politics of 1910, the year the play was written. This went on for two weeks.

McCutcheon, on a break between rehearsals, admitted a deep sense of culture shock: “At the end of the first week, I thought: ‘If I hear any more about Shaw, I’m going to kill myself,”’ she said cheerfully. But like a veteran trouper, she knuckled down and even came to understand Nunn’s intensity. “There are parts of ‘Pygmalion,’ political aspects, that he wanted to bring into this production.”

McCutcheon was astonished by the diverse backstage activity that surrounds a National production. “I’ve been doing rehearsals, singing lessons to strengthen my voice, speech work, costume fittings, dancing, wig fittings,” she sighed. “You have to be somewhere else every 15 minutes.”

This, she noted, could not have been more different from her experience on television. “When I did ‘EastEnders,’ you simply had to do things quickly, churn scenes out,” she said. One of the key people in McCutcheon’s life during the rehearsal period was Patsy Rodenburg, head of voice at the National, who taught her to speak Received Pronunciation, or RP-a clear, neutral form of spoken English, devoid of accent. “She won’t be speaking like the toffs,” Rodenburg said. “That’s an accent. The queen doesn’t speak RP.”

She had to ensure Jonathan Pryce (who plays Higgins and still retains some native Welsh vowel sounds) and McCutcheon ended up speaking as similarly as possible. And for the early part of the show, McCutcheon and the actor playing her father, Alfred, Dennis Waterman (a well-known British TV performer, also famous for roles as a Londoner) need to speak a matching version of Cockney. “That’s not as easy as you’d think,” said Rodenburg. “Martine and Dennis come from different parts of London.”

All this has been disconcerting for McCutcheon, she admitted. “I’m a bit spaced out about it all at the moment, a bit in shock. Every now and then I pinch myself and think, “Look at the amazing people you’re working with-Trevor Nunn, Jonathan Pryce. You were in a soap and now you’re at the National.”’

Still, the fact she was cast was more than just a little bit of luck, as Nunn confirmed. “She’s very highly skilled. She got the part of Eliza because she showed it was a completely natural bit of casting. She can sing that score.”

McCutcheon clearly remembered the audition in which the only others present were Nunn, Cameron Mackintosh (the theater impresario who helps fund the National’s musical productions) and a pianist.

“It was the most friendly audition I ever had,” she said. “I expected it to be daunting and nerve-racking, but I felt so relaxed. Most of the time they sang along with me, suggested songs. They’d do sneaky things, like leave me to hit the high notes, and I’d be shouting, ‘Oh no, where are you now?’ But luckily it all went well, and then Trevor sent me the most amazing letter.” She sighed touchingly. “If that’s how they do it, no wonder they get the best out of people.”

Still, “My Fair Lady” is about more than McCutcheon, and Pryce, a musical veteran of shows like “Miss Saigon” and “Oliver!,” has emerged triumphantly too. He first encountered the show when asked to perform at the Hollywood Bowl for three nights with British opera singer Lesley Garrett. “I said yes to the Hollywood Bowl first, then asked what I’d be singing,” he recalls. “It was: ‘My Fair Lady’? Fine. But I fell in love with the songs, especially ‘I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.’ There are some great tunes here.”

He could not resist a reference to Harrison who, being no singer, notoriously talked his way through the songs in the Broadway and West End stage productions and the film. “The difference is, I sing them. And when they’re sung, it gives us an opportunity to reorchestrate them. Previously, the songs were carried by the orchestration.”

Pryce has been impressed by McCutcheon’s voice. “I’d seen her at a charity carol concert two Christmases ago, so I knew she could sing live. Then I snuck into one of her rehearsals here and was pleasantly surprised. She doesn’t have that typical girl-singer sound that goes nasal on the high notes.”

“My Fair Lady” follows a National Theatre tradition of injecting realism and grit into musicals-a policy that featured heavily in its stagings of “Carousel” and “Oklahoma!” When McCutcheon is first glimpsed as Eliza, she is a poverty-stricken flower girl, wearing a shapeless coat, tied around the waist with string. “A very unbecoming silhouette,” noted Anthony Ward, who designed the sets and costumes. Her face is caked with dirt, and her natural radiant smile, featuring her even white teeth, is discolored.

This is in especially sharp contrast to George Cukor’s film, which is the object of mild but wide derision backstage at the National. Everyone commented that Eliza’s poverty is signified mainly by a single smudge of soot at the end of Hepburn’s dainty nose.

But Eliza must also look stunning when she enters society, and Ward has had the daunting task of emulating Cecil Beaton, costume designer for the original stage production and the film. Yet even when Eliza is dressed to the nines, a political point is being made. “Eliza’s entry into the ball should show her as modern, fresh, part of a new world, while the society people should represent the end of the Edwardian reign,” Ward said. “They’re the old world, and Eliza’s there to represent the suffragette movement.”

These seem like steep ambitions, but the production has clearly worked its magic. It will undoubtedly be the biggest theater hit in London this year, and already a transfer to Broadway is rumored. As for McCutcheon, her success is assured. Many headline writers here, in summarizing her performance, simply echoed Professor Higgins’ famous line when Eliza proves she has mastered a “proper” accent: “By George, she’s got it!”