Still not my favourite musical, though I love the music. One could see that the cast was enjoying themselves, they had everyone laughing almost constantly and the atmosphere was very engaging – we were lucky to catch one of the last performances before the show closed at the end of August. I was quite in the mood for the music and the show, enjoying every second thoroughly. Of course, Feli and I had also come to see Kenny Linden (again) ;D.

Kenny was the costermonger who flirted with Eliza, put his coat down onto the ground so she could walk on it, and offered her a bite of his sandwich during “Wouldn’t It Be Luverly”. His interpretation of this role was very simple, straightforward, sweet and engaging. Great mimic! He also played one of the guys in the bar (as we were introduced to Eliza’s dad).

One of my favourite bits was, of course, when he did the gentleman at Ascot. Kenny just is the incarnation of what I think of when I hear “gentleman” – tall, proud, poised when he bowed. The dance the men do at Ascot is dead funny, of course, they mimic the prancing of horses and the way they dig their hooves into the ground impatiently. The jockey cracked me up, of course, with that o-legged walk of his, though I didn’t like him as much as I liked Fergus Logan last year, who put on some extra swaggering.

In Act II, Kenny was one of the dancers at the Embassy Ball – waltzing with a ballet dancer’s poise and grace, simply delightful to watch. And when Eliza ran off to Covent Garden, he slipped back into the costermonger role and mistook the “lady” for the “flower girl”. He profusely apologized, with a perfect accent, and was cuffed on the head by his friend (coster 1 or 2) for his mistake, looking adorably flustered.

“Get Me to the Church on Time” is one of the numbers I particularly like, and Kenny danced superbly once again, then both he and his two costermonger friends got horribly drunk, with Kenny ending up sprawled on the floor after a lot of swaggering and stumbling. It was simply hilarious.

Katie Knight-Adams as Eliza was fantastic – her voice is strong and pleasant (even on the high tones) and she has a lot of comic talent, excellent mimic and gestures, fleshing out the role with lots of details and body language. Freddy was amazing – he gave a lot of character to the role and his “On the Street Where You Live” was one superb rendition of the song. The music was unfortunately too loud at times, not only during this song, and the singers were drowned out, which I found annoying.

Pickering was adorable, of course, but Higgins surprised me. I didn’t find him as detestable as usual. I suppose it was mainly because he wasn’t overpoweringly macho, putting a little more stress on the comic side, especially in “Why Can’t a Woman Be More Like A Man”. Even though I (as a woman) still find the ending of this musical slightly offensive, Higgins was fairly convincing in missing Eliza, bringing out the man’s emotions very well, so that when he was squaring Eliza off in his study and they both started laughing, it was a more mellow reunion between the two of them than I had previously seen staged.

Higgins and Eliza also shared a few expressive and tender moments, their looks and the way they moved around each other was wonderfully done to evoke the feeling of some affection and chemistry between them.

I very much enjoyed seeing Gareth Snook (former CATS-cast member) as one of Doolittle’s friends, he was funny and he’s got a great voice. Loved Pa Doolittle – he was blustering and had himself a ball.

STAGE DOOR:
Feli and I went, of course and Kenny came out just as we arrived. He looked around, saw Feli and came straight over, starting to chat away. As he’s usually very reserved it was a bit unexpected to have him talk this much; he was very enthusiastic as he informed us (on Feli’s question) that there were four costermongers all in all, but only three of them had any lines. He had played “coster 3”.

He also said he’d be taking a break when the show finished and was generally his excessively charming self, smiling and polite and nice. Kenny seemed quite happy to hear we had cheered for him (not that he could’ve heard or seen us as we’d been on the balcony ;D). It was lovely to see him again and to have him chat so amiably. He asked Feli how she was doing and made a typing motion in the air with his fingers when talking about e-mailing. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the guy so relaxed and grinning ;D.