La La La (Part 2)

Watching a musical in the known-to-be-lousy setting of the KL ConCentre auditorium was probably not a very bright idea to begin with. Watching that musical exactly one week after catching Phantom in the Esplanade Theatre (which is a real theatre), well that was really a downright idiotic idea.

But then again, the timing was such that the tickets for Phantom had already been booked (targetting what was supposed to have been the closing night before they extended it... again!), and the other show was on a severely limited run in KL.

And of course, having not seen any of the divine Ms Hepburn's movies (they were too old, even for me), I thought I should at least have an idea of what My Fair Lady was all about.

Here's what it turned out to be (at least the musical version of it): Arrogant old man picks up rude young woman off the streets and teaches her to speak proper English. As in, the way English is spoken it in England, so long as you are nowhere near either the countryside or the gutter. Apparently.

Thus educated, the young lady-in-the-making gets unleashed among genteel society, to make small talk about the weather (the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain, etc.) and one's health (like how me mom died). Eventually she succeeds only to discover herself now too classy and refined for her family and her old friends. So she goes and lives with the arrogant old man.

Please forgive me if I wasn't too inspired by all that snobbery.

So apart from that, there were other things about the musical that didn't quite impress me:

- there was only one set, and it was fixed. Scenes were changed by moving the furniture in and out
- it was shown in auditorium instead of a proper theatre so it wasn't quite suitable. Still, the acoustics were far better than when I watched Grease in the same place
- the songs were very ho-hum

Well, I wasn't expecting all that much to begin with so I wasn't too disappointed. In fact, I thought it had a certain kind of charm, like a high school musical. Except, of course, high school musicals don't charge over a hundred bucks for a show. But I'll just console myself by thinking of the good parts:

- the lead in the role of Eliza Doolittle was pretty good
- the opening tableau really was a tableau. How quaintly old school!
- the dancing was nice
- some of the guys were rather hot

All in all, it wasn't too bad a night out. If I just completely ignored the second act. Sigh, I really need a fix of Les Mis!