'My Fair Lady' at the Coliseum, London

I've never seen the stage version of 'My Fair Lady' and don't recall ever seeing the film all the way through so the production at the Coliseum was the perfect opportunity to put that right. When I booked the tickets I didn't realise it was the Jubilee weekend and the streets would be full of people aimlessly wandering round trying to find wherever they thought they were going. It was a relief to get inside the foyer and be faced with the familiar madness of people trying to find their seats - I'm used to that.

My main reason for wanting to see it was that it was devised by the same production team that delivered the glorious 'South Pacific' at Lincoln Centre (the Vivian Beaumont Theater to be precise) in 2010 that I saw while the snow piled up outside. That production transferred to London a few years later at the Barbican and then went on tour. I saw it several times. Would 'My Fair Lady' be up to the same standard?

The play opens in Covent Garden as the Royal Opera House empties and spills the posh folks into the common streets around the flower and vegetables market outside. That's where we meet flower girl Eliza Doolittle, the Indian army colonel and phonetics 'professor' Henry Higgins. You know the story from there, where Higgin's decides he can pass Eliza off as a lady under his tuition and so begins the tedious attempts to teach Eliza how to speak "proper". And he does... or rather, she does. But where does that get either of them?

The production was great and quite lavish with the main set of Higgins's house on a revolve to show different rooms and characters walking between them. Lots of fancy costumes for the characters and Eliza seemed to have dozens once she became 'posh'. It was also quite nice to know that the opening scene in Covent Garden was only five minutes walk round the corner from the theatre and we could all stumble across Eliza and her cronies at the market. Sadly, there hasn't been a flowers and vegetables market there for over 40 years but the Coliseum has installed a flower shop in the foyer to make up for that oversight.

I really liked Amara Okereke as a feisty Eliza, a great performance and a lovely voice. Harry Hadden-Patten and Malcolm Sinclair were fine as Higgins and Colonel Pickering, as were Maurine Beattie as housekeeper Mrs Pickering and Stephen K Amos as Alfred Doolittle. I also really liked Sharif Afifi as nice but dim Freddy with his lovely singing voice. Sadly Vanessa Redgrave as Mrs Higgins wasn't on for this performance. The performances were good, the costumes and sets were really good but I didn't fully enjoy the book or some of the songs. Higgins is a rather unpleasant mysogenistic character and his songs were all to the same stop/start formula. The character rather soured things for me and good on Eliza for walking away. I hope she got her flower shop.

My ignorance of this musical was demonstrated to me by two songs - who knew 'I Could Have Danced All Night' was from this show as is the lovely 'On The Street Where You Live'? The placing of 'Danced All Night' was a bit odd since at that point Eliza hadn't actually danced yet, the dancing is much later and the moment of her triumph at the ball is spoiled by Higgins and Pickering congratulating themselves on the success of their 'experiment', totally ignoring Eliza. 

Verdict? Yes, 'My Fair Lady' is definitely up to the standards of 'South Pacific', so well done to Bartlett Sher and his team at Lincoln Center in New York. And the actual musical? It's great fun, well performed and the cast have some great voices, but, well, on this outing, Lerner and Loewe ain't no Rodgers and Hammerstein. Go and see it for yourself.

'Picasso Ingres: Face to Face' at the National Gallery

A new exhibition opened at the National Gallery last week, 'Picasso Ingres: Face to Face', that considers Ingres's portrait 'Madame Moitessier' with Picasso's 'Woman With A Book', his version of the portrait. The Ingres portrait is the National Gallery collection and the Picasso is on loan from the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. The exhibition is just these two paintings, that's it, quite simple and also quite powerful with no distractions. 

I've seen the Ingres portrait many times and I've started to almost ignore it when wandering round the Gallery and that is a mistake. It was painted over several years and the composition changed, eventually being completed in 1856. It really is a glorious painting, just look at that delicate flesh tone with the blush on her cheek and the details of her jewels and dress. The thing that caught my attention on this viewing was the detail on her fan in her impossibly delicate hand. It's a thing of beauty in itself.

The floral frock is what grabs the attention but it's important to look elsewhere in the painting. Look at her reflection in the mirror on the right hand side of the painting and also at the fashionable Chinese vase partially hidden by another fan on the left. This is an important society lady and she needs to be portrayed as such.  It's a delicate and detailed painting.

In contrast, Picasso's version is anything but delicate. It was good to be able to get up close and see the paint piled on roughly, see the drip marks, the paint smeared on top of other paint and pushed and pulled until it creates it's own beauty. Rather than holding a fan, the lady here holds an open book.

The painting was made in 1932, an important year for Picasso and the subject of an exhibition at Tate Modern a few years ago that explored his amazing output in that year. That suggests that Picasso probably spent only a few days on the painting, if that, and yet he still created a thing of beauty. 

The exhibition is free and well worth popping into at the end of your visit to the National Gallery - it's in Room 46 at the top of the portico steps after you leave the 'modern art' rooms. There's also a small exhibition book if you want to know more about the paintings.