A ‘My Fair Lady’ in Tune With the Senses

Leslie Tinnaro has to be one of the noisiest Eliza Doolittles in recent memory. Her performance in “My Fair Lady” at the Fullerton Civic Light Opera starts with Cockney caterwauling so dense you can only make out every other word.

But as they say in the theater, all’s well that ends well. Tinnaro relaxed as Friday’s opening night moved on, and when her transformation from “squashed cabbage” to society wonder was complete, she’d come around and the audience came with her.

Tinnaro is not the best thing in director Jan Duncan’s pleasing, well-tuned production, though her comedic acting and huge voice do give us an Eliza we can work with. What’s best is John Wood as Henry Higgins, that almost unbearably confident master of phonetics who waves the wand over his quacking duck to conjure a swan.

Wood has a nice, chummy musical theater voice and a self-amused style that seems to deflate his ego even while pumping it up. He’s equally charming and pompous in “I’m an Ordinary Man” and he gets a dollop mushy in the signature “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”

There may not be much romantic vivacity between this Higgins and Eliza--it’s almost a surprise when they finally hook up--but Wood and Tinnaro do have an easy rapport, with much of the credit going to the ever-steady Wood.

“Easy” describes this handling of the popular Lerner & Loewe musical, based on George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion.” Duncan has kept it easy on the ears and eyes with the help of an able ensemble, set designer Ed Gallagher and costumer Sharell Martin.

Gallagher provides colorful backdrops, with Higgins’ studious flat and Eliza’s tenement neighborhood standing out. And Martin proves a real asset--the extravagant black-and-white duds she’s wrapped the upper-class swells in for the “Ascot Gavotte” number at the racetrack are especially striking.

That scene also gives Tinnaro one of her strongest moments. She’s quite funny when Eliza tries to maintain her perfect English and composure while mixing with these stiff folk who don’t know quite what to make of her.

Tinnaro also comes through with a rousing “Show Me” and a hopeful “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” though her “I Could Have Danced All Night” might have been subtler.

In supporting roles, Rick Clave is all rascally good fun as Eliza’s father in “With a Little Bit of Luck” and “Get Me to the Church On Time.”

Richard Voigts’ Colonel Pickering is the right comic foil for Higgins, and Christopher Carothers as Freddy Eynsford-Hill provides one of the show’s highlights when he sings the dewy love song “On the Street Where You Live.”

“My Fair Lady,” Fullerton Civic Light Opera, Plummer Auditorium, 201 E. Chapman Ave., Fullerton. Thursdays through Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays 2 p.m.; and this Sunday 7 p.m. Through May 27. $16 to $38. (714) 879-1732.