“My Fair Lady” by ESNA
Loughborough Town Hall

It’s been such a busy week for me as there have been so many excellent theatre productions to see, so was only able to squeeze this one in on their last night, but I am so glad that I was able to get to see it.

Eliza Doolittle, a rough Cockney girl, meets Colonel Pickering and Henry Higgins in Covent Garden where she’s selling flowers. When Higgins remarks that he could help Eliza speak properly and raise her status in the community, Pickering challenges him to do so and Eliza takes him up on the offer. Though difficult and frustrating for both Eliza and Higgins at first, the lessons soon begin to work wonders, and produce results that neither could predict.

The Lerner and Lowe soundtrack contains so many well-known, and well-loved pieces such as “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?,” “With a Little Bit of Luck,” “The Rain in Spain,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “On the Street Where You Live,” “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”

Jonathan Penton (Professor Higgins) shows off his wonderful singing voice in a very clipped way that matched the Rex Harrison original. Loved it that the audience reacted in such a shocked way with some of his comments and insults to Eliza. he made the character live on stage and that is why the audience reacted in such a way.

Abbie Cooper (Eliza Doolittle), oh my! what a transformation from flower girl to lady,and what a beautiful array of costumes Abbie got to wear. Lovely character acting and a lovely voice to match.

Kirt Hammonds (Colonel Pickering) makes his ESNA debut, and with the make up, he looks so different on stage. This part shows what a varied character actor he is as the last time I saw Kirt was as Lieutenant Gruber in "Allo Allo".

Another debut performance for ESNA was for Jason Wrightam (Alfred P Doolittle). i knew of Jason previously as I've seen him in several plays in Nottingham at the Lace Market Theatre, but don't think that I have seen him in musical mode, and this role really suited him. he had the audience in the palm of his hand and I have not heard an audience applaud so loudly and for so long as they did when Jason performed "Get Me To the Church On Time".

The lovely Liz Berrisford played Mrs Higgins, which is one part that I have always thought deserved a bigger role in this musical.

A wonderful, and large ensemble, packed with many well known faces creating a rich and rounded chorus.

The musical backing, musically directed by Mr Meng Khaw, was just beautiful. Let's face it, the soundtrack has so many gorgeous and well known songs, as long as you get the sound right, you have it cracked, taking nothing away of course from the hard work that Meng and the orchestra put in to make this score sound incredible.

Making sure that we could hear every single word from the actors were the sound engineers Rob Temperton and Harry Bridge.

Lighting Director for this show was James Cladingboel.

The sets were just amazing, and moved into place very swiftly which kept the pace of the play going, and at just under three hours - including interval, pace is vital, and ESNA did not hang around.

Directed by Emma Adcock, she has brought out the beauty of this musical perfectly.

Choreographed by Nicola Scoggins, and there are some gorgeous dance sections in this musical, I imagine not made that easy by some of the gorgeous costumes (Molly Limpets) the ladies wear.

It was the final night on Saturday night and, from what I could gather, the whole week was a sell out, as was Saturday night, and I also imagine that the cast had standing ovations on every night.

If you had never seen ESNA productions previously, you may be forgiven for thinking that this was a professional touring production, it was that good. It was that professional.