Loverly:The Life and Times of My Fair Lady (Broadway Legacies), McHugh, Dominic [fantasy books to read TXT] 📗

of Luck,” while the space outside Higgins’s house on Wimpole Street is the location for Freddy’s “On the Street Where You Live” (act 1, scene 7) and its reprise (act 2, scene 2). In both instances, we return to both a location and a song that has been heard before but experience them in a completely new light. When Doolittle’s song about optimism is reprised, it comes after the news of Eliza’s departure to live with Higgins, which represents a possible source of money for Doolittle. Similarly, the reprise of “On the Street” finds an “undaunted” Freddy (PS, 115) still singing his song in vain, but we see it in a new light when Eliza rejects his bland vision of romance and spits out the fiery “Show Me.”

Table 3.6.Scenic Outline of My Fair Lady

Strongly tied to this careful distribution of the scene locations is the musical structure of the piece (see table 3.7). Unquestionably, certain conventions determine the allocation of the numbers between the two acts, but it is striking that many of the songs from the first act either reappear or have some sort of analogue in the second act. There are several examples in addition to those discussed earlier. When Eliza hears the reprise of “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” sung around a fire by the vegetable costermongers in act 2, it is no longer her theme, and it serves to tell her that she no longer belongs in the market. The return of “Just You Wait” has a similar function, because a song that Eliza originally sang in her Cockney accent is now sung in her refined accent, reminding her—and us—that she is no longer the person she was. It also takes on a sad irony, because the threats Eliza originally throws at the imaginary Higgins when the song first appears in act 1 are now shown to be completely empty, since he has just stormed off, leaving her crouching on the floor in tears (PS, 113–4).48 In its original version, this song also shares something with “Show Me” and “Without You,” two numbers that have different styles but communicate Eliza’s feisty anger against men.

The trend continues with “I’m an Ordinary Man,” which is strongly connected to “A Hymn to Him” in subject matter and style, since both deal with Higgins’s attitudes to gender relations. Even though “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” has little explicit connection to the first act except for the brief reference to “I’m an Ordinary Man,” we will see in chapter 5 how it contains material from the cut first-act song “Come to the Ball” and reverses the meaning of the lyric from praise to insult. This theme was also used in the cut ballet from act 1. So even if “Accustomed” was planned as a bigger summation of themes than it is in the published score, it still provides an accumulative finale to the show. In addition to its own reprise, “With a Little Bit of Luck” is obviously connected to “Get Me to the Church on Time” as a similar music hall–style song for Doolittle. There is also an irony in the fact that Doolittle’s mocking rebuttal of marriage and responsibility in “Luck” has now been turned on his head as his friends bid him a poignant farewell on his wedding day. Finally, “You Did It” is briefly brought back later in act 2, when Higgins interrupts Eliza’s “Without You” with a short verse of “By George, I really did it.” Even this brief summary of the musical contents of the show demonstrates how strongly planned the material is.

Table 3.7.Outline of Musical Numbers in My Fair Lady

While not every number can or should be seen as functioning as part of a broader duality, there are other important aspects to the show’s musical structure. In particular, both acts have a sequence of musical numbers that increase dramatic tension over a self-contained unit of time. In act 1, this happens in the fifth scene, where four musical numbers take Eliza on a journey from frustration to elation. “Just You Wait” is closely followed by the sequence of lessons that are interspersed with verses of “The Servants’ Chorus.” The last of these leads into the final lesson, in which Higgins teaches Eliza to pronounce “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain” correctly. In turn, this leads into the jubilant song, “The Rain in Spain,” followed by the even more elated “I Could Have Danced All Night.” This last song is the close of the sequence, which occurs over the course of a single scene and provides one of the most imaginative and effective parts of the show.49

Table 3.8.Outline of Timescale of Scenes in My Fair Lady

The example from the second act is arguably even more special. After the concerted number “You Did It” at the opening of the act, the long scene of dialogue between Eliza and Higgins that ensues is closed by Eliza’s tearful reprise of “Just You Wait.” This initiates an unbroken chain of music also encompassing the reprise of “On the Street,” Eliza’s new song “Show Me,” and the reprise of “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” in the flower market. Even though it lasts only seven or eight minutes, this sequence of music provides just the kick that most musicals need in the middle of their second acts. The tension mounts during the first two reprises and reaches its highpoint in “Show Me,” where Eliza vents her anger as never before. The vigor of this number is cleverly reduced by the “Flower Market” music, which depicts early morning at Covent Garden and segues into the gentle reprise of “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” This complex chain of numbers is a prime example of how Lerner and Loewe’s adaptation of Pygmalion adds an expressive dimension not found in the play.

Their third structural tool is the manipulation of time. Table 3.8 shows how the musical’s timescale is specifically defined in terms of month and time of the