Wednesday 18 May 2022 11:58 PM Diamond diva sparkles as Eliza: PATRICK MARMION reviews My Fair Lady trends now
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Coliseum, London
Rating: 
Never mind that Amara Okereke is the first black Eliza Doolittle in a West End production of this joyous musical based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion.
First and foremost, Miss Okereke is quite simply a fabulous Eliza. She’d very likely be hailed down the East End not so much a ‘diamond geezer’ as a diamond diva.
She illuminates an illustrious company which also features Harry Hadden-Paton as the short-fused Henry Higgins – a professor of linguistics who transforms the cussing Cockney flower girl into a high-society debutante.
Even more notably, octogenarian Vanessa Redgrave plays Higgins’s scathing mother. And there’s comedian Stephen K. Amos as Eliza’s ne’er-do-well dad, Alfred; plus Malcolm Sinclair as Higgins’s better half, Colonel Pickering.
My Fair Lady reviewed: 'Miss Okereke (right) is quite simply a fabulous Eliza. She’d very likely be hailed down the East End not so much a ‘diamond geezer’ as a diamond diva'
Bartlett Sher’s production of the Lerner and Loewe musical – best known to most of us from the 1964 film starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn – is an import from New York’s Lincoln Center.
Surprisingly, the staging is a little dwarfed by the widescreen Coliseum stage – a rare instance of American produce not being supersized.
Higgins’s
