Has there ever been a better time to send up the British aristocracy? With the world still going gaga over the latest addition to its royal family—a group that has, with the exception of Queen Elizabeth II, become increasingly indistinguishable from reality TV stars, albeit with posher accents and a bit more discretion—even as our version of class, socio-economic status, plays an insidious role in our polarized politics, can’t we all stand to laugh at the folks who first showed us the idiocy of privilege?
Of course, you needn’t consider any of this to savor Encores!’ delightful new staging of Me And My Girl, starring Christian Borle as one Bill Snibson, an irrepressible cockney bloke who learns he’s the 14th heir to the Earl of Hareford—the product of his high-born father’s brief union with a teddibly inappropriate woman—and Laura Michelle Kelly as Sally Smith, the longtime love Bill is encouraged to drop like a stone, but cannot forsake.
The scrumptious, tuneful trifle of a musical was first produced on the West End in 1937, nearly 20 years before the bow of My Fair Lady (now being beautifully revived at Lincoln Center Theater) but well after the play that provided Lerner and Loewe with their source material, Pygmalion, debuted. Broadway audiences weren’t introduced to Bill and Sally, whose journeys owe no small debt to Eliza Dolittle’s, until 1986, when a new production featuring revisions and contributions to librettist/lyricists L. Arthur Rose and Douglas Furber’s original book, by Stephen Fry and Mike Ockrent, proved a smash hit, earning Tony Awards the next year for both its leads, Robert Lindsay and Maryann Plunkett, as well as choreographer Gillian Gregory.
Though I missed that production, I doubt that anyone who saw it would be disappointed with the star turns in this concert staging, or with the wit and whimsy director/choreographer Warren Carlyle has brought to it. Borle is one of those rare performers who can inhabit a character while suggesting a certain ironic detachment, where less comedically skilled or likable actors would stumble in this effort. Never mind that his East End accent isn’t technically perfect; he tosses out Bill’s haughty, naughty lines with expert ease, and a wink that never seems cloying or self-congratulatory. Watching him spar and parry with Harriet Harris’s predictably riotous Maria, Duchess of Dene—the stuffy auntie who toils, in vain, to transform Bill into a perfect gentleman—is as much fun as anything you’re likely to witness in a crowded room.
Borle is equally winning in his scenes with Kelly, who as Sally may not match the comic panache Plunkett apparently offered, but who demonstrates at least enough aptitude to hold her own with the main attraction. Kelly also reminds us of her distinctly supple, graceful singing, which for all its loveliness always puts character above technical flash. Tap-dancing on a table during the show’s title number or swooning together in the dreamy dance sequence accompanying “Leaning on a Lamp-Post,” Kelly and Borle prove a physically nimble pair as well.
Carlyle’s breezily buoyant production numbers also include a “The Sun Has Got His Hat On” in which the company—led by Mark Evans, hilarious as Bill’s effete cousin, the Honorable Gerald Bolingbroke—kicks up its heels with tennis racquets and drinks in hand. Others in the excellent cast include Lisa O’Hare, lissome and drolly cunning as the unabashed gold digger Lady Jaqueline Carstone; Chuck Cooper, characteristically hearty as Sir John Tremayne, co-executor (with Maria) of Bill’s father’s will; and Don Stephenson as hapless family solicitor Douglas Herbert Parchester.
Allen Moyer’s bright, handsome set design captures the splendor of the manor Bill inherits in a concert setting, while Emilio Sosa’s costumes evoke both the decadence of his new acquaintances and, in the show-stopping “The Lambeth Walk,” the high life that low-born folk summon for themselves. By the time Sally makes her final entrance—after visiting an elocution expert, unnamed but clearly a playful nod to Shaw—there’s little question that she and Bill will liven up the joint. Just you wait, lords and ladies, just you wait.
Me and My Girl opened May 9, 2018, at City Center and runs through May 13. Tickets and information: nycitycenter.org
