Lesley Garrett is no stranger to the Midlands and next month returns to the region in a multi-award-winning production of Lerner & Loewe’s ever-popular 1956 stage musical, My Fair Lady. What’s On recently caught up with Lesley to find out more about the show...

Soprano and actor Lesley Garrett has performed in numerous shows, operas and concerts across the globe, so it is perhaps not surprising to discover that the current tour of My Fair Lady is not her first time in the ever-popular musical. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s 1956 show is based on George Bernard Shaw’s drama, Pygmalion, and features classic songs like I Could Have Danced All Night, Wouldn’t It Be Loverly, Get Me To The Church On Time and On The Street Where You Live.

The play and musical tell the story of Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle and Professor Henry Higgins, who makes a bet with a friend that he can teach Eliza to speak English so perfectly she could pass for a lady. But as he embarks on elocution lessons for Eliza, Higgins fails to foresee how the bet will affect them all.
Lesley is currently playing Higgins’ housekeeper, Mrs Pearce, in the award-winning Lincoln Center Theater version of the show - but she first appeared in My Fair Lady when she was a teenager.

“I’ve been in three productions of My Fair Lady in my life,” she says. “The first time was exactly 50 years ago, in my school hall, and I played Eliza. The second time I played Eliza was 20 years later at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the wonderful Jonathan Pryce as Mr Higgins. So now I just thought how wonderful it would be to completely come full circle and play the role of Mrs Pearce.
“Also I should say that I wanted to be part of one of the best productions of any musical I’ve ever seen or taken part in in my life. It’s an absolutely exceptional production with a stunning director and a really wonderful cast. It’s such a pleasure and a privilege to work with such an extraordinary group of people. Every single person is so talented and so dedicated.”

Directed by Bartlett Sher, the Lincoln Center Theater production was premiered in New York in 2018 and then played London’s Coliseum in 2022. Alongside Lesley on the UK tour are Michael D Xavier as Higgins, Charlotte Kennedy as Eliza and Adam Woodyatt as Eliza’s father, Alfred P Doolittle.

“The score is a masterpiece,” Lesley continues. “It’s one of the most perfectly crafted pieces of music that I know, and to have the opportunity to be part of that musical tapestry every night is an enormous privilege.”
Playing Mrs Pearce also gives Lesley a role to relish.
“Bartlett Sher was determined to go back to the original play, Pygmalion - and that play affords all women a fantastic opportunity to express their feminism. Bernard Shaw was miles ahead of his time and a staunch feminist, and if you go back to the play, that’s very clear.
“The play is all about strong women, and none stronger than Mrs Pearce. I call her Fierce Pearce. She runs the household like a commander of a ship and she tells Higgins what for. She’s the first one actually to point out that he can’t treat Eliza as he likes. For him, it’s just an experiment, but Mrs Pearce sees there will be consequences for Eliza.”

Sher initially wanted Mrs Pearce to be played as a Scottish woman, which meant some homework for Lesley. “In the original Pygmalion, Pearce was a Scottish actor, and the wonderful Maureen Beattie played the part in London, and she is Scottish from the top of her head to her toes. So Bart asked me to learn, in my summer holiday, how to speak with a Scottish accent, and I worked so hard at it. And then, after one day of rehearsals, he said to me ‘Gee, Lesley, could we just hear your Yorkshire accent?’ So I did it in my Yorkshire accent and he said ‘That’s fantastic, we gotta have that!’ And after I’d spent all my summer learning it!”

Lesley’s career has been hugely successful and very varied. A classically trained soprano, she has performed at venues including the Royal Opera House and Glyndebourne, and alongside renowned orchestras such as the Hallé and the Royal Philharmonic, while also appearing in a host of much-loved musicals, The Sound Of Music and Carousel among them. A familiar face on television as a singer, she has been a contestant on Strictly Come Dancing and Celebrity MasterChef, and was a voice on the BBC Children In Need single, Perfect Day. 

“I have always, throughout my career, said that I don’t have dividing lines between different genres of music, which many people like to have. I grew up with both opera and musicals. I was very privileged to grow up in South Yorkshire. I was born in a pit village called Thorne, and all my family were miners or railway workers. We all sang every kind of music you can imagine, all the time. It was a very powerfully musical community, and there were many musicians in my family. So for me it’s never been a conflict between opera and musicals - and for the people I grew up with, it was never a conflict either. At school, at Thorne Grammar, we’d do Benjamin Britten’s Little Sweep one term and My Fair Lady the next. We just mixed it all up.
“It wasn’t until I went to London that I realised they were very jealously divided camps and you had to belong to one or the other. I’m afraid I’ve never subscribed to that. I just get on with it - I’ve always been a bit of a rebel!

“What I love about musicals is the fact you do eight shows a week, and by doing that you develop your character because you think ‘I could play this a different way tonight.’ And because performances are so consecutive, you get that throughout, which I absolutely love.”

Lesley is no stranger to Birmingham. “I always love coming back to Birmingham. I’ve performed in Symphony Hall many times. And I was at the Midlands Arts Centre with a fabulous show for Welsh National Opera called Rhondda Rips It Up!, about the suffragettes. 

“In Birmingham the audiences are very appreciative and very open to trying different things. And it’s so diverse. I like the way that all communities in Birmingham give arts a go.” 

by Diane Parkes