The most beloved musical of all time, Lerner & Loewe’s My Fair Lady in a lavish new Broadway production and now on tour across America! Featuring the classic score with old favorites including, “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “The Rain in Spain,” “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” and “On the Street Where You Live.” Telling the story of Eliza Doolittle, a young Cockney flower girl, who is turned into a lady with the help of phonetics professor Henry Higgins. While she’s being transformed, Eliza loses her accent, and her sense of self, gaining a new sense of agency, and paving her own path.
“Plush and thrilling! Illuminated with new stars.” – The New York Times.
“Thrilling! Glorious and better than it ever was! A marvelous and transformative revival.” – The New York Times.
The musical’s 1956 Broadway production was a notable critical and popular success. It was followed by a hit London production, a popular film version which took home eight Oscars, including Best Picture, and many revivals. At its pre-Broadway tryout at New Haven’s Shubert Theatre and during the first preview, Rex Harrison who was unaccustomed to singing in front of a live orchestra, “announced that under no circumstances would he go on that night…with those thirty-two interlopers in the pit”. He then proceeded to lock himself in his dressing room and only came out little more than an hour before curtain time. The whole company had been dismissed and had to be recalled however, the opening night was a complete success. The musical premiered on Broadway in March 1956, at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in New York City. It transferred to the Broadhurst Theatre and then The Broadway Theatre, where it closed in September 1962, after 2,717 performances, setting a record for the longest run of any musical on Broadway up to that time.
My Fair Lady is a musical based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion, with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. This Broadway revival production by Lincoln Center Theater and Nederlander Presentations Inc. officially opened in April 2018 at the Vivian Beaumont Theater. It was directed by Bartlett Sher with choreography by Christopher Gattelli, scenic design by Michael Yeargan, costume design by Catherine Zuber and lighting design by Donald Holder.
The show was nominated for ten Tony Awards winning one for Best Costume Design in a Musical, It also won two Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Revival of a Musical and Outstanding Costume Design for a Musical, A Drama League Award for Outstanding Revival of a Broadway Musical and five Outer Critics Circle Awards for Outstanding Revival of a Musical, Outstanding Actress, Outstanding Featured Actor, Outstanding Director and Outstanding Costume Design, and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Musical Theatre Album.
Review by Alex Soloski at the Vivian Beaumont Theater for The Guardian newspaper in 2018.
“A splendiferous layer cake with a bittersweet core, Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady has returned to Broadway in a smashing new production from Bartlett Sher (The Sound of Music, The King and I). Expertly acted, pleasingly sung, and often visually splendid, it makes a good faith attempt to honor the show’s history and intentions while also acknowledging the charged sexual politics of the moment. If its ending still doesn’t satisfy, maybe that’s because no My Fair Lady ending can. What’s most striking about the revival is the strength of the performances. Ambrose’s Eliza is immensely moving, yowling and cringing and ready to play the victim until she discovers her own great integrity. Haden-Paton is a playful and charismatic Higgins. Brash and witty, he doesn’t apologize for the character’s staggering lack of empathy, nor should he. Allan Corduner is a charming Pickering, Jordan Donica a suitably lovestruck and ineffectual Freddy. Norbert Leo Butz gives a riotous Get Me to the Church on Time, though an oddly subdued With a Little Bit of Luck.”