Germany Lerner & Loewe, My Fair Lady: Soloists, Chorus, Ballet, and Extras of Stadttheater Bremerhaven, Philharmonic Orchestra Bremerhaven / Hartmut Brüsch (conductor). Stadttheater Bremerhaven, 2.11.2024. (DMD)
This superb production confirms yet again that the enjoyment of opera and musicals does not necessarily depend on location. It shows just how obsolete the problematic distinction between the performing arts in a country’s capital and the so-called provinces is.
Wolfgang Kurima Rauschning’s set consisted of panels on either side of the stage, as well as one each at the front, one towards the back, with painted interiors, in elegant pastel colours, suggestive of the English upper middle class. The background was a projection of drawings of cityscapes of London, in a style identical to that of the lateral panels. On the revolve was a metal structure on two levels, with stairs leading up to the raised level from the ground floor. The back walls came in the shape of five flower petals. Steps, banisters and petals were painted in bright, lively colours, with the lighting, designed by Katharina Konopka, enhancing those colours or bringing out different shades. This arrangement of the set was used for indoor scenes, especially as the Higgins residence. When the revolve turned, the back side of the petal structure was used imaginatively to represent outdoor scenes, including the Ascot races. Some spectators saw what I described as a petal structure as the sections of the cone of an old-fashioned record player, one of Higgins’s devices.
The costumes, designed by Susanna Mendoza, matched the set in their display of colours, blending in harmoniously with each other – recognizably English. The costumes represented the upper middle class just as well as the aristocracy at Ascot and the Embassy Ball. The working classes of the Covent Garden flower market, with more grey and fewer bright colours, were believable without rendering Eliza and her friends as paupers in Les Misérables mode.
Any production of My Fair Lady depends first and foremost on the singer/actress cast as Eliza. Victoria Kunze rose to the challenge admirably. A long-serving resident member of the Bremerhaven opera company, she has proved herself to be an excellent actress to start with. Her Eliza was brimming with energy, exuberant and lively. She was comfortable in her environment as a Covent Garden flower girl, with her friends and her position in that community. But her yearning for more was also evident from the start, without it upsetting any of her friends. When she first arrived at Higgins’s home, it was obvious how long and hard she had thought about this very major attempt at changing her life for the better; of actually doing something, taking action, rather than carrying on dreaming around a fire in cold weather. The same seriousness formed the basis of her commitment to learning, her disappointment at being ignored after her success at the ball, her deep feeling of gratitude towards Mrs. Higgins for accepting her as she was. This earnestness also carried the end of the musical rendering her return to Higgins believable: it was her decision, rather than an act of succumbing to inferior female servitude. Kunze combined her acting skills with consummate singing. Here she demonstrated a keen awareness of the difference between singing opera, unamplified, projecting the voice to reach the full depth of the theatre, and singing to the microport a few inches from the mouth. That awareness translated into a full sound, expressing both the feisty and the thoughtful, more delicate sides of Eliza’s nature. Kunze carried the production to its success.
Dirk Böhling presented Higgins as a man by nature very competent at his work and who knows this as well. He was naturally proud, set in his ways. He liked the sound of his own voice – literally. Böhling is well known to local audiences from his work as a popular presenter on the regional radio: his voice was indeed strikingly sonorous for the spoken lines, and he sported more of a singing voice for the songs than you get with many an actor playing this role. Some of the insults he threw at Eliza seemed more stinging in German than I recall them from the English original. Such an impact was alleviated, however, by Böhling’s Higgins clearly liking what he said, enjoying his own phrases, uttering them for that very enjoyment as much as for conveying contents. His sadness when Eliza left him was moving, and his moment of joy when she had returned came across as genuine.
Bremerhaven theatre company stalwarts Kay Krause and Isabel Zeumer contributed well thought-out portrayals of Pickering and Mrs. Higgins. Ulrich Burdack had ample opportunity as Alfred P. Doolittle to showcase his acting skills and casting an operatic bass in this role so pivotal to the plot, to further an understanding of Eliza’s social and family context, was a luxury. Before the curtain went up, the theatre’s artistic manager, Lars Tietje, asked the audience to excuse any sign of Andrew Irwin’s indisposition. I certainly did not notice any such sign: having heard Irwin in a range of parts over the years, I found his singing of Freddie fresh, committed and flawless.
Edward Mauritius Münch had trained the chorus well and many chorus members clearly enjoyed their smaller solo parts. They, as well as members of the theatre’s ballet company, all choreographed by Kati Heidebrecht, worked well together to create highly entertaining, enjoyable ensemble pieces. Hartmut Brüsch led orchestra and singers through a lively, nuanced reading of the score that sounded as colourful as the set and costumes appeared to the eye.
Daniel Meyer-Dinkgräfe
Production:
Book and Lyrics – Alan Jay Lerner
Music – Frederick Loewe
Director – Toni Burkhardt
Sets – Wolfgang Kurima Rauschning
Costumes – Susanna Mendoza
Choreography – Kati Heidebrecht
Lighting – Katharina Konopka
Chorus director – Edward Mauritius Münch
Dramaturgy – Torben Selk
Cast:
Henry Higgins – Dirk Böhling
Eliza Doolittle – Victoria Kunze
Freddy Eynsford-Hill – Andrew Irwin
Colonel Pickering – Kay Krause
Alfred P. Doolittle – Ulrich Burdack
Mrs. Pearce – Iris Wemme-Baranowski
Mrs. Higgins – Isabel Zeumer
Jamie / Zoltan Karpathy – MacKenzie Gallinger
Harry – Róbert Tóth
Butler / Policeman – Masahiro Yamada
Maid / Queen of Transylvania – Kathrin Verena Bücher
Maid – Yvonne Blunk
Mrs. Eynsford-Hill – Elena Zehnoff
George – Vladimir Marinov
Lord Boxington / Servant – James Bobby
Lady Boxington – Brigitte Rickmann
Mrs. Higgings’s Maid – Katharina Diegritz
Flower Girl – Minji Kim