My life for an entire week was consumed by My Fair Lady. Here are my thoughts on Act II.

Potentially Happy Readers, ‘tis I, Jemina, and it is almost spring break. (At the time of writing this, it was not yet spring break.) Let that comfort you, as it comforts me. (I hope you are now even more comforted.) This blog is about Act II of My Fair Lady, and since the production is over, there is basically no danger of spoiling! Unless, of course, you plan on seeing some other production… In any case, I will be speaking very specifically about details in the play, so beware, here be spoilers! 

            As a humble makeup technician for this year’s spring musical, my role in the production was deemed undeserving of a personal script to use. Fair enough. For this show, tech only needed to be present for one rehearsal per week, as opposed to two per week, the usual amount. Okay, that’s fine. I missed a few weeks in the beginning for a number of different reasons! That’s not preposterous, is it? So by the time I went to rehearsals regularly, the scenes being rehearsed were all in the second Act. (To this day, I still know very little about the actual happenings of the first Act.)             Due to my non-active role, the plot of the show had escaped me right until the week before Tech Week. (Tech Week is known as the week we perform, as well as the week of dress rehearsals. It’s incredibly stressful and draining, which is why last week, I drowned in schoolwork, sleep deprivation, and extreme cognitive dysfunction.) Our stage manager, Callie, asked me to be “on book”, i.e., to read from the script, and say all the lines that were forgotten, lines that are supposed to be said by absent actors, and the lines of actors on vocal rest.             It turned out that this assignment was super fun, compared to my actual, mundane job! It brought back all the fun memories I had of acting, and I could finally read the script and figure out what all the characters were actually doing. For example, what did Colonel Pickering mean when loudly shouting “BOOZYYYYYY” into the telephone? (Apparently, he was greeting his old friend, whom he had not seen in some 30 years.)              I was having a lovely time appreciating my friends’ acting and the pit orchestra’s music, reading out lines when called for, and pretending a little bit to be Eliza while reading for Layla,  when Callie had me removed from the Stage Manager’s chair at the Stage Manager’s table in front of the stage, and I no longer served any purpose whatsoever. :(             But that was how I found out about the plot of the second half of My Fair Lady!             All that being said, what is up with the ending of the show???             **SPOILERS**              The basic premise of the show is that a poor cockney lady selling flowers named Eliza Doolittle, was taken into the care of Professor Henry Higgins, who’d bet on his abilities as a linguistics professor to teach Eliza how to become a “proper lady”, and to speak like one as well. (Just for context, a large part of his character is rooted in very intense sexism.) In the entirety of the first Act, everything goes exactly according to plan. The two become friends, and one could even call them close. There are some shenanigans going on, surrounding her alcoholic father and subsequent human trafficking, but that’s not important. By the second Act, Eliza had become the belle of a ball, and another linguistics professor from Hungary had been so utterly fooled that he’d thought her a Hungarian princess.             Unfortunately, Higgins begins the second half of the show with an entire song dedicated to his marvelous accomplishment, to which his friend Colonel Pickering, and his entire house staff agrees. Despite Eliza’s very real presence during this song, and her objection at being ignored, he does exactly that. After everyone else has left to turn in for the night, Higgins finally acknowledges Eliza by asking her where his slippers were, but he becomes angry when she confronts him about his neglect.              Admittedly, they are both violent in this altercation, and Eliza’s anger issues do emerge, but Higgins’ extreme misogyny is far uglier. My analysis of the situation is that Eliza, while gaining an identity as a member of higher class, lacks its subsequent security. After all, she has no title, land or illustrious family history. Even the clothes she wears and the jewels she is adorned with, aren’t hers. Higgins doesn’t understand at all, and Eliza leaves, with nothing to her name anymore, not even her poverty.              On her way out, she meets Freddy, her enamored suitor who has been writing to her “two or three times a day”, and she interrupts his poetry waxing session to demand that he prove how much he loves her, since she is tired of words. Slay, Eliza. It’s a gorgeous song, and she ends up storming off, still frustrated, leaving him dazed.              While Eliza has a meeting with her father, leading into a song dedicated to his upcoming wedding, Higgins and Pickering wake up and find Eliza gone, beginning to search for her. Thus begins my second favorite song in the show, “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like a Man?”              This song is really frustrating, and really gets you to hate Higgins, so props to Nathaniel for his amazing delivery. Eventually, Higgins finds Eliza at his mother’s estate, who is really her only ally. He and Eliza argue about how he doesn’t properly appreciate her efforts at “becoming a proper lady”, or even respect her at all, for that matter. The crux of his reply boils down to “That’s a you problem >:(” Leyla gives a MAGNIFICENT performance of “Without You”, my favorite song of the musical, gloriously expressing how she’s reclaiming her life and forgoing Higgins’ presence forevermore. By the end of the song, Higgins is once again alone.              Higgins is very angy. He sings a very long song alternating between his vivid fantasy of Eliza crawling back to him, impoverished and unloved, and his realization of how he has “grown accustomed to” Eliza’s presence, and particularly, her face. He returns to his study and listens to his recordings of Eliza, when he had first met her.              And then Eliza returns! At their joyful reunion, Higgins has seven words to say to her.              “Eliza, where the devil are my slippers?”             Cue the ending music, cue the fade-to-black, cue the applause, but I’m sorry, WHAT???             It turns out that Eliza never gets to reclaim her identity, she never gets to marry anyone who has ever claimed to love her, she never gets any honest validation of her very justified emotions, and more importantly, we never get to see Henry Higgins GROVEL.             To conclude my extremely late blog post, My Fair Lady is a very entertaining and well-written musical, our actors and production crew definitely deserved its standing ovation, and the ending is stupid. 

            -With heartfelt feelings, Jemina