Dazzling My Fair Lady is simply stunning on the Mayflower stage

With its fairly ghastly tale of social engineering, how could My Fair Lady possibly be much fun in the 21st century? The answer is very easily – when it is played with the skill, the wit, the energy, the imagination, the vibrancy and the sheer all-round brilliance that we get in the production currently gracing the Mayflower Theatre stage in Southampton. It’s a production which gets absolutely everything right. In fact it is perfect, a no-expense spared, huge and supremely lavish production in which every penny reaps dividends.

First of all, it is a production which looks superb from a director – Bartlett Sher – who clearly cares deeply about the visual. It is a wonderful set with terrific transitions, but always it looks a picture. Whether we are at the races, at the ball or in Higgins’ study, it is always stunning to look at. Clever use of silhouettes and wonderful costumes do the rest, and the huge set piece Get Me To The Church On Time is dazzling.

But above all, it’s a show about the performances, and Michael D Xavier is a wonderful Henry Higgins. Xavier has got endless charisma. You can’t take your eyes off him. He is incredibly expressive – and that’s how he gets away with playing this awful character who inflicts on a poor girl the cruellest of social experiments.

Xavier gives us a Higgins who is an intellectual giant but emotionally stunted; the possessor of an overarching brain who slowly, painfully discovers that he has also got a heart in there somewhere too. Higgins pursues his intellectual challenge gleefully but finds himself completely out of his depth when sentiments rise up he didn’t even know existed. Xavier gives us a rich, masterful, highly comic portrait of a flawed but fascinating man, a man increasingly deranged in his frustrations – but goodness, you can’t help liking him for all his failings. It is a monumental achievement by a superb stage actor.

Opposite him and matching him every step of the way, despite a CV in the programme totally dwarfed by Xavier’s, is Charlotte Kennedy as his Eliza Doolittle – a beautiful performance which gives us the vulnerability and the aspirations, the success and the consequent social dislocation, the growing confidence and the complete flowering. Again, it’s masterful.

Excellent too from EastEnders’ Adam Woodyatt in the role of Alfred P Doolittle. You can’t help feeling he probably had more fun tonight than he ever did in all those years of EastEnders. Also impressive are soprano Lesley Garrett as Mrs Pearce and John Middleton (Emmerdale) as Colonel Pickering. But then again, it’s excellent from everyone – a flawless, sublime production which powerfully, mesmerisingly makes the case that My Fair Lady has still got plenty to say to us in 2023. A truly great night at the Mayflower.