Theatre in Review: My Fair Lady (Lincoln Center Theater/Vivian Beaumont Theater)

	Harry Haddon-Paton, Lauren Ambrose. Photo: Joan Marcus

Nothing in this life is perfect, but My Fair Lady comes awfully close. One of the rare musicals that improves on its source material, it enchants from the overture's first mocking chords to the wistful, wintry regret of "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face." Alan Jay Lerner's libretto expertly expands George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, peppering the songs with lyrics marked by a distinctly Shavian wit. Frederick Loewe's score unfurls one velvet-lined melody after another. In its impeccable construction, piercing humor, and glorious musicianship, it is all but indestructible.

It can even withstand Bartlett Sher's production, which is covered with directorial fingerprints but has no strong point of view, apart, perhaps, from a certain nervousness about making sure we get -- really, really get -- that Eliza Doolittle, the cockney flower girl refurbished into a lady of society, is no man's puppet. You'll also have to contend with a pair of lackluster leads. But that book, those songs!

About those leads: Harry Hadden-Paton, best remembered by Americans as the swain who rescued Lady Edith from spinsterhood in Downton Abbey, has produced the outline of a plausible Henry Higgins. Stalking around in front of Covent Garden, in "Why Can't the English" he upbraids his fellow citizens for their peculiar habits of pronunciation and makes palpable Higgins' passion for linguistics; throwing himself on the sofa in a fury, he amusingly denounces half of humanity in "I'm an Ordinary Man." A younger-than-average Higgins, he maintains a brisk, all-business attitude that effortlessly ruffles feathers all over London. He also drops hints about Higgins' growing, if largely unspoken, emotional attachment to Eliza, most notably when he almost offhandedly admits that she has been an exceptionally gifted student -- and is essential to his project.

The ideas are there, but they haven't been allowed to ripen; at times, it's as if Hadden-Paton is shying away from Higgins, trying to find ways to make him more appealing. There's no getting around it: The man is a terror, a brilliant egotist who sees everyone as a science experiment and who is blind and deaf to the nuances of polite society. (One of the show's supreme ironies is that he is training Eliza to join a society for which he doesn't give a fig.) The trick of playing him is to put on display his most grating qualities while subtly spoofing them, making room for us to be amused while eagerly awaiting the moment when Eliza turns the tables on him. To extent that his bad manners have been muted, the show's comedy is smoothed over, its acid humors cut with a little too much milk.

If Hadden-Paton's Higgins minds his manners a little too much, Lauren Ambrose's Eliza is an exacting, yet enervated, creation. She seems to be scrupulously tracking every drawn-out vowel and mangled pronunciation. Her cockney accent is strenuously managed. She moves inelegantly, regards Higgins with a faint look of panic, and wails, "I'm a good girl, I am," as if asking Heaven itself to intervene in her case. But, especially in the early scenes, her performance lacks energy, focus, an instinctive will to fight back when her dignity is assailed. She improves markedly once Eliza has acquired received pronunciation, and her handling of the later scenes is more assured, but, even then, the fire is missing, and her singing, while never less than professional, never really excites.

The number that should reveal Eliza as one not to be trifled with is "Just You Wait," a revenge fantasy in which, after an unusually exhausting day of his bullying, she gleefully imagines sending Higgins to his doom, by order of the Crown. Too bad that Ambrose is upstaged by the scenery: Michael Yeargan has placed Higgins' study on a turntable that, as it revolves, reveals a blue-tiled examination room and a hallway. At the exact moment when Ambrose should be allowed to plant her feet at stage center and land a showstopper, she is set to wandering through these rooms, barely coming back to her starting place in time to finish the number. This isn't the only example: That turntable takes so many trips in Act I, the audience should get frequent-flyer miles.

This is one of many excessively busy flourishes, courtesy of Sher and his choreographer, Christopher Gattelli. The second half of "With a Little Bit of Luck" -- sung when Eliza's father, Alfred P. Doolittle, decides to storm Higgins' home, ready to practice a little blackmail -- is cluttered with actors moving around flats meant to depict the passing scene, interrupted by a suffragette parade. It is one of the most delightful character comedy numbers in the musical theatre canon. Can't Norbert Leo Butz, who plays Alfred, just be allowed to deliver it? Later, when Alfred returns for "Get Me to the Church on Time," the set, depicting his favorite tavern, opens up to reveal a music hall interior, and a line of can-can girls is produced to join in the merrymaking. So far, all right; then half a dozen men in tacky can-can girl drag appear, looking like Les Cagelles in the last revival of La Cage aux Folles. This leads to all sorts of oddball wonderings: Is Alfred really a closet case, living on the down-low?

Of course, there are plenty of things to enjoy. The opening, in which Eliza travels downstage, arriving at her flower basket as Covent Garden rolls into view, is a lovely touch. The embassy ball exudes glamour, aided by the presence of the orchestra onstage. Yeargan has also supplied a stunning show curtain offering a wide-angle view of London, with St. Paul's in the center. Catherine Zuber's costumes include elegant ball gowns and cream-and-lavender formal wear for Ascot, among other visual treats. Donald Holder's innately tasteful lighting supplies a variety of time-of-day looks. Marc Salzberg's sound design is thoroughly transparent, allowing the voices to soar above the thirty-piece orchestra playing the superb musical arrangements of Robert Russell Bennett and Phil Lang.

Among the supporting players, Norbert Leo Butz is an efficient, if not inspired, Alfred; oddly, he is better in the books scenes than his numbers. In maybe the greatest example ever of luxury casting, Diana Rigg treats the role of Mrs. Higgins like a cat with a ball of yarn, batting her lines around lazily, serenely landing every laugh on offer. Allan Corduner is first-rate as Colonel Pickering, Higgins' delightfully befuddled partner in crime. As Freddy, the toff who loves Eliza from afar, Jordan Donica sends "On the Street Where You Live" soaring up to the stratosphere; he also sensibly handles some of the silliest lines ever written for a musical theatre ingenue. Linda Mugleston is crisply amusing as Mrs. Pearce, Higgins' housekeeper, her deep disapproval of his manner creeping out from behind her Scottish burr. Manu Narayan offers a surprisingly mincing interpretation of Zoltan Karpathy, Higgins' former student and bête noire.

And, in addition to the aforementioned numbers, there's "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?", "I Could Have Danced All Night," "The Rain in Spain," and a half dozen more jewels. Note for note, this is one of the two or three greatest musicals ever written. But what is strangely missing at the Beaumont is the fundamental clash of iron-willed opponents from different classes who embark on a most improbable social experiment, a plan culminates in a teasingly ambiguous ending: What can be the future for these two? Sher seems to have taken the decision that the original conclusion doesn't present a sufficiently independent Eliza, so he has come up with a different version -- no lines have been changed -- that is drawn-out, and, in the end, just as open to interpretation. It also requires one of the actors to exit through what all night long has been understood to be the wall of Higgins' study. It's emblematic of a production in which -- unlike the currently rethought, but celestial, revival of Carousel -- changes have been instituted in all sorts of places, but without a unifying vision. Some stardust, some authentic enchantment, is sorely missed. -- David Barbour