My Fair Dustman

Australian stage legend Reg Livermore knows classic musical My Fair Lady well, having played Professor Henry Higgins in the most recent Australian revival. Now for the new 60^th Anniversary production, directed by Dame Julie Andrews, he steps several rungs down the British class ladder to play dustman Alfred Doolittle. Neil Litchfield reports.

One is a Professor of Linguistics; the other collects the garbage. It’s a delicious switch for Reg Livermore.

“Doolittle’s a bit of an opportunist who basically relies on the gift of the gab, which gets him into trouble in the end.

 “I relate to the free and easiness of his character. The fact that he’s a bit of a drunk helps, and the fact that he doesn’t want to work too much helps. He’s got a couple of off-siders who obviously do all the lifting. He knows that he can get enough money to go to the pub and give himself and his mates a drink, but the woman at home doesn’t expect too much of him until he comes into money.

“Then life changes, and he’s fairly miserable about that. ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’ is a song that’s sung with certain ruefulness. I think the ‘Ding, Dong’ could almost be for a funeral.”

Doolittle tries to put the bite on Professor Higgins for beer money in the scene they share.

“That scene is a strange one, because they’re both playing games with each other, and Doolittle’s the one who really has to step down. He may arrive with certain ideas in his head about what he’s going to get, and how he’s going to carry it all off, but Higgins really gets the better of him. He gets the better of almost everybody, except Eliza, the person he’s trying to better. Fortunately I don’t remember Higgins’ lines, but they’ll probably come back to me as they’re occurring.”

Switching roles from Higgins to Doolittle means exchanging one set of famous songs, written for Rex Harrison, for another pair created for the legendary Stanley Holloway.

“They’re very different songs, musically and lyrically to the ones Higgins has, which are among a handful of the great musical theatre songs, I believe. They were always a pleasure to do; it was nice to have something lyrically sensible to sing.

“Doolittle is another thing, with Music Hall and Vaudeville overtones very much there in his songs, ‘With a Little Bit of Luck’ and ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’. It’s funny approaching songs that are that well known. ‘Get Me to the Church on Time’ is probably better known than a lot of the songs that Higgins sings.

Have Music Hall and Vaudeville influenced Reg’s own performances?

“Probably, without even knowing it; other people who I saw would have had much closer and more personal links to that era than I did. But the fact that I saw all those revues, not just the Philip Street revues, but I remember when The Kiwis came to Australia, and they were doing those sort of sketches. Also I saw pantomimes that were often inhabited by people who were vaudeville and music hall performers playing the Dame, so as a kid I know I took all of that on board.

“By the time I came to do my own shows, they were really an amalgam of everything I’d seen and loved. I know where they came from now, of course, but I didn’t then.

“I wish I had been around to see Stiffy and Mo at the Tivoli, but I didn’t get that chance.”

Archival film of those performers really doesn’t do the theatrical experience justice, I suggested.

“The live theatre thing was what it was about – the relationship with those people sitting out there in the dark would have been extraordinary, because of the license they took with the language and the morality. They were definitely adult shows - some of their natural instincts as performers, when I saw them in pantomimes, were barely repressing what they really wanted to do with the material.

“So there is a lot of it in My Fair Lady. On one hand you’ve got a sort of Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson relationship between Professor Higgins and Colonel Pickering, and then you’ve got this Music Hall fellow coming in; he’s a garbage collector, and they don’t allow him a lot of jokes, but if he had them he’d probably revel in them.

“I’ve also got no doubt the choreography will be great. They’ve got Christopher Gattelli, a Tony Award winner for choreographing Newsies. I’m sure there’ll be echoes of the original, but he will take it a bit further with modern influences and help to move the show along.”

And how does the veteran performer feel about ‘hoofing’ in this show himself?

“I don’t know how much there will be yet, but I’ll find out. Oh, me back! I haven’t done any hoofing for a couple of years.”

Does he have a fitness regime in mind?

“I’ll do some walking for a couple of months (although) it’s pretty boring. I don’t like walking with music in my ears, because you end up dancing down the street, and people look at you.

“I’ve always said with a show that you don’t really know what it’s going to be like until somebody tells you this is what you have to do, and that’s when you bring your body into line, and say ‘OK, here we go’.”

As for the classic musical itself, Reg says, “I love the way it’s being approached for this 60^th anniversary production; pseudo-recreating and reimagining that original 1956 production, using original designs with the costumes and the scenery and all of that being overseen by people who had worked with, or were in some way closely related with both Oliver Smith who did the scenery and Cecil Beaton who did the costumes.”

My Fair Lady opened at the Joan Sutherland Theatre, Sydney Opera House, on September 6, 2016.

Images: Reg Livermore as Alfred P Doolittle and Alex Jennings, as Professor Higgins (photographer: Jeff Busby) & Reg Livermore (photographer: Brian Geach).

Originally published in the July / August edition of Stage Whispers.