Samantha Geraci-Yee’s bittersweet, emotional performance combined with a powerful, polished and rambunctious effort by Broadway’s Patrick Sullivan in “My Fair Lady.” It happened Thursday in the Savannah Center.
This gender-defined war of wits, words and wills might be billed as “the lady and the scamp.” Sullivan and Geraci-Yee fought the battle of the sexes all night long. They ran the love/hate musical gamut from “The Rain In Spain” to “I Could Have Danced All Night” to “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face” to “Without You.”
The glorious, scaled-down and intimate version of “My Fair Lady” was presented by Maestro Bill Doherty.
Geraci-Yee, in her final major role with the Florida Central Lyric Opera company, played Eliza Doolittle with a Cockney accent, feminist backbone and enchanting vocal grace. The flower girl earns the title of lady the hard way – by putting up with the chauvinistic, self-centered, class-obsessed Professor Henry Higgins.
Sullivan portrayed Higgins as a heartless, howling, linguistic monster. Sullivan, who has starred in such Broadway productions as “42nd Street” and “Beauty and the Beast,” immersed himself into Higgins and birthed a brooding, boorish, bully.
“I think he’s a jerk,” Sullivan said earlier this week.
That’s the way George Bernard Shaw wrote Higgins in “Pygmalion,” in 1913. The title became “My Fair Lady” when Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, turned it into a smash Broadway musical and hit movie.
Watch video of the performance here:
Doherty put together a stellar but small cast, led by Sullivan and Geraci-Yee. Other standouts include Will Mulligan, a regular on the New York stage, who plays the husky, boisterous Col. Pickering, with a layer of kindness and understanding.
Joe Rose was outstanding as Eliza’s father, a boozy manipulator who cashes in on his daughter and meets his match in Higgins. Rhonda Howard was proper and peppery as Higgins’ unsatisfied mother.
David Rowan, choir director at the Villages Charter High School, was youthful and exuberant as Freddy, who tries to take Eliza away from Henry Higgins.
Jessica Martin Gnanamanickam shined as Freddy’s mother while Alexandra Levine played Mrs. Pierce – Professor Higgins’ maid – with divine snobbery.
The plot starts spinning when Eliza, selling flowers, spews out a Cockney rap that catches the ear of Professor Higgins. Soon, Higgins devises a contest and takes it upon himself to turn Eliza into a lady who can speak and act proper.
Watching Sullivan in this role is a treat. He’s filled with hubris, not only in his words but also his domineering stage movements and voice inflection. He doesn’t care about Eliza the human being, just the subject matter of his experiment.
“I can pass her off as anything,” Higgins boasts.
But near the end of the play, Higgins comes to the realization he could lose Eliza, and he needs her. That’s when Sullivan’s dramatic skill fleshes out the personality of Higgins. He sings “Without You” and is wounded and lonely but still filled with ego and self-preservation. You get the sense, no matter what happens, a sadder but not-wiser Higgins will carry on.
Sullivan portrays the character not in a sympathetic way, but with empathetic insight.
Geraci-Yee as Eliza, first appears in a ragged outfit and cap, hustling flowers. She depends on Higgins for transformation, and imagines it early on, singing “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly.”
Higgins relentlessly turns Eliza into his version of a lady. A turning point comes late in the first act when Geraci-Yee, sings a show-stopping “I Could Have Danced All Night” filled with joy and operatic flavor.
But Eliza’s real triumph of spirit comes when she sings “Just You Wait,” a kind of declaration of independence from Higgins.
Other memorable performances include David Rowan’s zesty, romantic, “On the Street Where You Live.” Joe Rose had a blast singing “With A Little Bit Of Luck.” He danced all over the stage and jumped off to walk by the front row as he sang with glee on “Get Me To The Church On Time.”
There are some plot twists in this version of “My Fair Lady,” which is far more true to the George Bernard Shaw play rather than the musical.
But it’s still a theatrical treat to hear the words of Shaw and the music of Lerner and Loewe.
“I’ve never seen it on stage before and I’m so impressed with the talent heretonight,” said Dee Dee Kosmoski, who lives in The Village of Duval. “Samantha has a beautiful voice and Patrick is a wonderful actor.”
She attended the show with her daughter-in-law Emily and granddaughter Grace, 8.
“I’ve never seen the play or the movie and I think it’s amazing,” Emily said. Grace just liked “the music and the dancing.”
Geraci-Yee is finishing her 2-year program with the Central Lyric Opera Company, headed by Doherty.
“I’ve learned so much here and I loved working on stage and being in The Villages,” she said. She will be heading to work on stage in operas and shows in New York City and Tampa.
“The most important thing that Bill and The Villages did for me, was give me an opportunity to perform,” Geraci-Yee said. “I worked hard on ‘My Fair Lady.’ It took a long time to get the Cockney accent right. I knew I had it when I felt it, not only in my voice but in my body.”
She praised Patrick Sullivan.
“Working with a Broadway performer is a tremendous learning experience,” Geraci-Yee said. “He taught me so much about being on stage. I’ll never forget him or The Villages.”
Like Eliza Doolittle, Samantha Geraci-Yee truly is, one special lady.
