"My Fair Lady"
Telling stories instead of educating the audience!
Premiere for the successful musical "My Fair Lady" at the Vienna Volksoper. We asked the two leading actors Burgtheater star Markus Meyer, who plays Professor Higgins, and "Eliza Doolittle" Josefstadt actress Paula Nocker for a "Krone" interview.
"Krone": Ms. Nocker, you are celebrating your folk opera debut with the role of Eliza. You come from a musical family, your grandfather was an opera singer - were you born with a talent for singing?
Paula Nocker: I have always sung. When I came home from school, I would enter karaoke on YouTube and sometimes just sing for four or five hours at a time.
How do you like the role of Eliza?
Nocker: It's a great role. I've seen the movie with Audrey Hepburn so many times. This role was always so coveted! When you look at who has played her. I'm honestly grateful for everything I get to try out and learn.
Mr. Meyer, you are primarily associated with the Burgtheater, but have already appeared on stage at the Volksoper - now as Professor Higgins!
Markus Meyer: I love these excursions. I also think it's very important. It would be nice if some people in the German-speaking world didn't turn up their noses so much or if fellow actors said with a certain undertone: "Oh, you're doing musicals or operettas now!" I think it's really important to get to know this genre. It's amazing what my musical colleagues achieve. I take my hat off to them three times over. We actors can really take a leaf out of their book, also in terms of discipline and precision.
It's about two men playing a betting game with a young woman. The subject matter always raises the question: should or how should this be brought to the stage nowadays?
Nocker: First and foremost, I always like it when you tell a good story, and "My Fair Lady" is a great story.
Meyer: For me, it's a kind of fairy tale, a parable. Of course, you can see it in terms of #MeToo and wokeness: Two old white gentlemen pick up a lady or a girl off the street, and what happens to her? I would look at it from Higgins' point of view. He sees an opportunity to take his professional skills to the extreme with Eliza. But he wants to get the best out of her and then give her the freedom, so to speak, to be better able to hold her own in the world. And that's what Eliza asks for at the beginning. She says, please teach me to speak, I want to work in a flower store. She reproaches him for this later because she realizes that she has created a prison for herself because she can no longer simply talk to her friends on the street. Higgins didn't even think about that. You can blame him for that or not. I don't blame him because he sees the whole thing from the perspective of the scientist, the phonetician. But Higgins never does anything out of malice or to hurt Eliza. He also wants to do something good for her and prove something to himself.
And not to forget: Higgins, just like Pickering, wants to win a bet...
Nocker: In principle, two people meet who are prepared to do what has to be done for their own agenda. And it's quite human that something then arises for both of them from this journey that they make together that they hadn't previously considered.
Is there actually a need for this discussion about whether something is still contemporary or not? Can't you just leave the pieces as they are?
Nocker: I think absolutely. It's important to show what it was like so that you can see the development. And everyone can do what they want with it. So you can take it as: Aha, there are two old white men who are now doing what they want with her. Yes, that exists. There was and there is. And it's important to show that.
Meyer: I think that too, anyone who doesn't want to see it or doesn't agree with it simply doesn't go in. We don't force it on anyone. I don't want to educate anyone, I want to tell a story. And the intelligent audience will then draw conclusions and say, thank God that time is over. Or you feel sorry for a character. People want to be touched by a story in the theater. Incidentally, George Bernard Shaw was quite emancipated. He exposes the behavior of the two men.
Let's get back to the essentials, the music: what is your favorite song in "My Fair Lady"?
Meyer: Mine is "In the Street You Live"
Nocker: . . . yes, that's mine too, and "I'm used to her face!", I really like that song too!
This article has been automatically translated,
read the original article here.
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