A cherished classic arrives in Chichester at last
Chichester Festival Theatre has finally mounted My Fair Lady—a title that has enchanted audiences for around 70 years but, until now, had never appeared on this stage. The new production, directed by Rachel Kavanaugh, has landed to immediate acclaim, with a five-star write-up from reviewer Graham Hiley at In-Common. His verdict sets an early tone: this is a richly staged revival that balances spectacle with bite.
Lerner and Loewe’s musical, first performed in 1956 and set in 1912, follows Eliza Doolittle, a young flower-seller, and Professor Henry Higgins, a phonetics scholar who bets he can refashion her speech and pass her off at an embassy ball. It is a familiar story to many, popularised by the Broadway original starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. What’s fresh in Chichester is not the outline but the emphasis: questions of class, power and entitlement are pushed to the fore, without sacrificing the show’s melodic pull.
Performances that anchor the revival
Hadley Fraser returns to the Festival Theatre—swiftly on the heels of an appearance in Magic just three months ago—to play Higgins. The portrayal, as described by Hiley, is anything but benign: physical, driven and at times domineering, a portrait of a man who exerts control because he can. The reviewer notes how Higgins’s behaviour slides from hauteur into petulance when challenged, underlining a character whose brilliance does not excuse his blind spots. In one pointed detail, the professor’s insistence that Eliza is effectively his property—because he paid £5—lands with deliberate discomfort in 2026.
As Eliza, Keziah Ibe is singled out as the vocal standout, with the review marveling that this is her professional debut. The dynamic between Ibe and Fraser—her resolve against his self-belief—appears to be the engine of Kavanaugh’s staging, allowing the production to find humour and heart while refusing to sand down the barbs. The classic numbers remain, but the frame around them sharpens the argument: who gets to define civility, and at what human cost?
| Role | Performer |
|---|---|
| Eliza Doolittle | Keziah Ibe |
| Henry Higgins | Hadley Fraser |
Design and dance with purpose
The In-Common review lauds the staging, costumes and choreography, pointing to a production that embraces spectacle without losing narrative focus. While not a museum piece, the visual world remains rooted in Edwardian London, heightening the distance between Eliza’s Covent Garden origins and the salons she is taught to navigate. Those contrasts—street grit and salon polish—echo through the movement and wardrobe choices, giving the audience a tangible sense of what Eliza is asked to trade away.
Some of the show’s most famous set pieces are allowed to breathe and bristle at once. Higgins’s bachelor tirades feel barbed anew, a reminder of how some casual assumptions linger.
“Why Can’t A Woman Be More Like A Man?”
The line still startles, even as the melody charms; Kavanaugh’s handling underscores that this is the point.
Class, control and Chichester’s audience
Hiley’s review calls out the production’s willingness to confront uncomfortable truths embedded in a beloved score. Higgins’s complacency is not redeemed with a neat bow, and the production doesn’t pretend that a few changed vowels erase the structures that kept Eliza in her place. That tension gives the evening its moral weather. The show may be set more than a century ago, but the questions it stirs about social mobility, gendered expectations and who holds the microphone don’t feel distant.
For Chichester audiences, there’s added significance in simply seeing this title on the Festival Theatre stage for the first time. The venue has a long record of high-quality revivals and new work; adding My Fair Lady to that list brings both familiarity—those tunes—and fresh debate. Locally, it also signals the theatre’s ongoing confidence in drawing major talent back to the city, with Fraser’s rapid return and a debut from Ibe that, by the review’s account, announces a new voice to watch.
What the five-star acclaim signals
Hiley’s 5/5 rating is unambiguous. He highlights the leads, the show’s visual sweep and the director’s clarity of purpose. For a production debuting at a theatre that prides itself on rerouting the classics, it’s a strong endorsement. It suggests that those after a night of big melodies will find them, but so will anyone curious about how a golden-age musical can speak sharply to the present. If you have followed the Festival Theatre’s recent seasons, this one sits comfortably among its polished reimaginings—handsome to look at, yes, but with something to chew on on the way home.
- First time My Fair Lady has been staged at Chichester Festival Theatre.
- Direction: Rachel Kavanaugh, praised for cohesive staging, costume and choreography.
- Leads: Hadley Fraser (Higgins) and Keziah Ibe (Eliza), with Ibe’s vocals especially commended.
As ever with a piece as well-known as this, memories of past productions hover. Yet the Chichester staging, to judge by the early critical response, earns its place on its own terms—musically plush, narratively pointed and anchored by two performances that refuse to turn a complicated relationship into a fairytale. For a summer evening in West Sussex, that sounds like time well spent.
