Fair dinkum, he's a right Henry

Queensland-born William McInnes stars with Taryn Fiebig in My Fair Lady. Photo / Supplied

Aussie My Fair Lady star William McInnes talks to Linda Herrick about playing Professor Higgins

Professor Henry Higgins is on the line from Melbourne. In his lifelong dedication to the study of correct phonetics, he has never been more offended than by the strident screech of Cockney flowergirl Eliza Doolittle. In the words of the song Why Can't the English Learn to Speak? he thinks Eliza is "a prisoner of the gutter ... she should be taken out and hung, for the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue".

Then the good prof starts gargling to the tune of I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face ...

It's a little known fact that Australian actor William McInnes, who heads the cast of the musical My Fair Lady at the Civic from March 25, is a seasoned gargler. He may have won multiple Logie Awards for most outstanding actor in TV series such as SeaChange and Blue Heelers and best actor at the Australian Film Institute Awards for movies Look Both Ways and Unfinished Sky, but he also has what he thought (until now) was a secret skill. At university, many years ago, he was in a group called the Musical Garglers.

"Oh man, where did you get that from?" he groans. "Unfortunately, that's true. You can see how I spent my university years - we spent too much time in the students' bar. We played anything you could gargle to. We actually got asked to perform at a wedding. We gargled with beer and stuff like that. I am a class act. I am going to be Henry Higgins in stubbies and thongs. Don't put that in!"

This is not McInnes' first musical. In Year 10 of school, he claims, he was in the chorus of The Pirates of Penzance, but got kicked out with "all the rugby boys because we were too rowdy". Surely he's had more adult musical experience since then? "Yeah, I think so," he drawls, "but I can't remember what it was called. But My Fair Lady is a terrific piece," attending briefly to his publicity duties. "Anyone who knows it thinks fondly of it. There's every tune you can hum or gargle to. What do you want to hear?"

Thus I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face comes gurgling down the phone, McInnes style. The point of Henry Higgins, though, is that he speaks in a frightfully posh upper-class English accent. McInnes, who was born and bred in the coastal town of Redcliffe, east of Brisbane, does not.

"I'm doing it as a Queenslander and I'm gonna wear my old mouth guard, come on stage in an old rugby uniform and electrical tape around my ears and be the broken-down old fullback. They're gonna kill me if you put this in. Don't put it in!"

McInnes, 44, first saw the film of My Fair Lady when he was 10 at the local drive-in with his mother. It was a double bill, with The Sound of Music, "and so long we had to pitch up a tent and camp overnight", he quips. "My Fair Lady was a cracking piece back then and Audrey Hepburn was a cracker."

The Redcliffe drive-in was important to young William. He has written about it in his best-selling childhood memoir A Man's Got to Have a Hobby. "I went there with a friend who had a golden Torana to see Alien," he recalls. "Everyone was engrossed in Alien but he just wanted to listen on the radio to the last couple of overs of this one-day international of Australia playing the West Indies so we watched the last minutes of Alien with the Australian cricket

commentators going crazy. At the end, he turned round and said, 'That was a bloody good movie. Whoi can't they make more loike it?' It was ridiculous."

McInnes laughs and adds: "I've got an American friend who says, 'You Queenslanders, you speak like a ventriloquist, you don't move your lips when you speak'."

So he does take an interest in phonetics, like Higgins? "That's one of the great things about Australians, you know? 'Why can't the New Zealanders speak clearly?' And you go, 'Yeah, well, have you just looked in the mirror?' It's a very funny thing, the Australian accent. You get two speeds - you either speak v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y or," sounding like a cartoon chipmunk, "like you're a helium race caller."

I think it's safe to say McInnes is not going to model himself on the Henry Higgins archetype established by Rex Harrison. "I guess everyone relates him to Henry but it doesn't mean you turn into a Rex Harrison tribute artist," he says. "It's not like an Elvis tribute artist. Now there's a thought! Elvis as Henry Higgins. 'Thank you very much' and have him come out in a jump suit."

Let's get a bit more serious here. Has he learned the lyrics yet to MFL's classic songs like You Did It, I'm an Ordinary Man, The Rain in Spain? "Glarg glarg glarg," is the response.

He adds, slightly more soberly, "I am going around the house singing and my kids are over it. I dropped my son off at the station - not too many 15-year-olds have to deal with walking over to a crowded rail station in their school blazer while their father is yelling out to them Why Can't the English Learn to Speak?"

McInnes says he thinks Higgins is "a weird character. It's almost like he's one of those people who become so attuned to some particular part of human existence that the rest of it falls away. I know he's such a misogynist, misanthropic sort of character but the warmth of the musical is how that gets stripped away and he realises he's quite a lonely man, which is moving."

McInnes has to finish now and go to rehearsals. "Look, if I could just seriously leave you with one thought though on our two nations' relationship, best described in these words." He gargles away. "You see - I'm a serious artist. Luckily there are professionals in the rest of the cast."

He signs off with a word I haven't heard since the last time I was in Oz. "Hooray!" Indeed. Hooray for Henry "Gargler" Higgins.

LOWDOWN

What: My Fair Lady
History: Based on the 1913 play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw. Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner; music by Frederick Loewe. The plot involves Cockney flowergirl Eliza Doolittle who takes speech lessons from Professor Henry Higgins so she can pass herself off in London high society as a "lady". The pair reluctantly fall in love. First staged on Broadway in 1956, starring Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews, followed by a hit London season, and a film in 1964 starring Harrison and Audrey Hepburn, whose singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon. A remake starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Keira Knightley is scheduled to be made this year.
The new show: The stage version opens at the Civic on March 25 and runs until April 12. It stars William McInnes as Henry Higgins, Taryn Fiebig as Eliza, Ilona Rodgers as Henry's mother, and Rhys McConnochie as Colonel Pickering accompanied by a large ensemble cast and 33 members of the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.
Bookings: Through the-edge.co.nz; tickets from $74.90