Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House
September 6, 2016

With all the buzz around the 60th anniversary production of Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 Broadway smash hit musical – not the least of which is the admittedly remarkable fact that it is being directed by the original Eliza Doolittle – it’s easy to forget the many merits of the show itself. Of course, the songs are a series of perfectly formed miracles, assembled by some of the greatest craftsmen in their field. The prickly, complex Alan Jay Lerner was a natural to shape the prickly, complex Henry Higgins, a man who turns into flesh and blood before our eyes in a dazzling sequence of character songs. Equally natural was Frederick Loewe’s gift for melody and his way with a period score, his operetta sensibilities finely attuned to the musical mores of Edwardian London. But what really makes My Fair Lady stand head and shoulders above the crowd is its massive, densely argued and, in Julie Andrews’ excellent staging for Opera Australia, thoroughly plumbed book, which rushes along in scintillating dialogue, much of which is by the great George Bernard Shaw.

Shaw himself had several targets in his sights when he wrote Pygmalion...