EMMA THOMPSON TO WRITE ‘MY FAIR LADY’
The British actress will write the screenplay for a remake of “My Fair Lady.” The new version will draw on additional material from “Pygmalion.” New York Times
“My Fair Lady” is merely a masterpiece, the wonderful synthesis of Shaw’s wit and a glorious musical score. Has there ever been a better musical? But I am sure that Emma Thompson can improve it. And when will she be repainting the Sistine Chapel?
Couldn’t she be content to “improve” Shaw’s lesser works? No one would mind her writing a screenplay for “Captain Brassbound’s Confession”. Better yet, she could venture into originality. The world is ready for a new Gidget movie…Moon Doggie gets a surfing scholarship to Cambridge. Gidget follows him there, and finds herself being wooed by both Bertrand Russell and Virginia Woolf. …Yes, Ms. Thompson can even cast herself as Gidget. Just leave “My Fair Lady” alone.
Of course, that hope is futile because I can predict Ms. Thompson’s real goal. She intends to play Professor Higgins. I suppose you could rationalize a gender-reversed perspective. Emma Thompson did go to Cambridge where that sort-of-thing is part of the curriculum. So, her Henry Higgins picks up Eliza Doolittle(Colin Farrell) and attempts to teach intelligible English to the urchin. (I only wish someone tried that in real life with Farrell.) In this “My Fair Lady”, you could cast Maggie Smith as Colonel Pickering, Keira Knightley as Freddie Eynsford-Hill, Helen Mirren as Alfred Doolittle and Charlotte Rampling as Edward VII.
I will be rooting for Kaiser Wilhelm (Uma Thurman) to kill off half of the characters in this travesty. In reality, that would have happened. Did you think that Freddie or Colonel Pickering would still be alive by 1919?