My Fair Lady

[foxy]

A couple of weeks ago I took myself up to the box office at Lincoln Center and bought a ticket for a Wednesday matinee performance. I paid $137 for a pretty decent seat up in the mezzanine. Come last Tuesday the snowstorm rolled into NYC. The next day, Wednesday was to be my performance. Since I commute into the city there was no way I could chance going in. I was very disappointed. I was going to miss the performance.

Friday (yesterday) I went into the city to see if I could make an exchange and happily, to my surprise, the ticket agent was willing to make an exchange. We had a quick discussion of possible dates and he volunteered that he had a seat available for Saturday’s (today’s) matinee. For an additional $40 I got a first row center orchestra seat. I was literally behind the conductor. I know that sometimes being too close can be as bad as sitting too far but I went for it. I’m so glad I did. Because of the orchestra pit I was about 10 feet from the edge of the stage. It was great.

I’ve seen past revivals of My Fair Lady but I can’t imagine a better production than this. Whatever the critics may have to say when it opens, I loved every minute of it.

Lincoln Center does an incredible job in their revivals. Everything is top notch.

The sets, costumes, orchestra, all just as good as it gets.

As to the stars.... Lauren Ambrose who many might know from Six Feet Under plays Eliza. She’s a wonderful actress I’ve seen in other plays but I had no idea she sings so beautifully. Her voice is just gorgeous.

Harry Hadden-Paton who I didn’t know is very good as Professor Higgins.

So much fun to see Diana Rigg as Mrs. Higgins. So sexy in the Avengers years ago, and of course Game of Thrones. Her movie, theater and television credits are as long as your arm.

However Norman Leo Butz as Alfred P. Doolittle almost stops the show. Just to see him perform Get Me to the Church on Time is worth the price of a ticket.

The Ascot Gavotte was also a favorite scene. There was never a dull moment in this production.

All in all I couldn’t have asked for a more delightful afternoon at the theater. I’m actually grateful to the snow storm that wound up putting me into such a great seat.

This was certainly the theater highlight for me this season. Highly recommended.

Edited March 25, 2018 by foxy

[+ Avalon]

I enjoyed Diana Rigg in Victoria. She was understanding of the gay couple.

 

http://www.whatsontv.co.uk/news/diana-rigg-makes-bow-victoria-duchess-489952/

[+ WilliamM]

For an additional $40 I got a first row center orchestra seat. I was literally behind the conductor. I know that sometimes being too close can be as bad as sitting too far but I went for it. I’m so glad I did. Because of the orchestra pit I was about 10 feet from the edge of the stage. It was great.

I’ve seen past revivals of My Fair Lady but I can’t imagine a better production than this. Whatever the critics may have to say when it opens, I loved every minute of it.

 

I am looking forward to seeing My Fair Lady in May even though I have not liked past productions (with an elderly Rex Harrison and later Jonathan Pryce in London).

 

 

Agree about front row, especially Ethel Merman in Gypsy. I saw the musical again from the balcony, and it was very different. A master class in how to sing loud enough to reach several balconies including the theaters near the Imperial.

Edited March 25, 2018 by WilliamM

[N13]

One of my not fondest moments was being spit on by Merman in the front row of Dolly! Some things are best experienced from a little distance.

[+ WilliamM]

One of my not fondest moments was being spit on by Merman in the front row of Dolly! Some things are best experienced from a little distance.

 

"Gypsy" was playing at the Imperial by the time I saw it. So the orchestra was between me and the stage. Perhaps what happened to you was because she was older. Merman was certainly not spiting in 1960; I was close enough to see.

[Cooper]

Yesterday, I saw the new production of Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady at the Vivian Beaumont theater at Lincoln Center. It's been 25 years since this show was on Broadway. The production was excellent!

 

It's the story of a pompous phonetics professor named Henry Higgins who is so certain of his abilities that he decides to transform a Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, into a lady. He is most successful and manages to fool almost everyone. The big test comes at the Royal Ball.

 

This is a big production and the large stage at the Vivian Beaumont theater is perfect for it. It has a 32 piece orchestra that leaves the pit and plays on stage for the Ball. The singing and musical numbers are amazing and I enjoyed hearing some of my favorite show time hits: Wouldn't It Be Loverly, With A Little Bit of Luck, The Rain in Spain, I Could Have Danced All Night, On The Street Where You Lived, Get Me To The Church On Time, I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face, Just You Wait, etc.

 

One of the most outstanding and lively musical numbers was Get Me to the Church on Time. It was so much fun and the choreography was done to perfection.

 

This show has a lot of very talented actors and singers. Never knew what a great voice Lauren Ambrose had. And, it was nice to see Diana Rigg alive and well. Last time I saw her she was killed off in the Game of Thrones.

 

This show has it all, from the outstanding costumes, to amazing scenery, big orchestra, wonderful musical/dance numbers, and a very likeable cast that connects well with each other and the audience.

 

My Fair Lady is currently in previews with opening night set for April 19th.

Edited March 25, 2018 by Cooper

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

I'm looking very much forward to seeing it next week. And then again in early May

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

And for those non-traditionalists here...

 

[edjames]

Saw this production at LCT Friday evening and....I LOVED IT!

One of the best productions of My Fair Lady I have seen. Everything about this show is perfect.

Great music, great cast, great costumes, sets, choreography, and direction. Every minute was Broadway heaven.

If you loved LCT's past productions of South Pacific and The King and I, this newest will not disappoint.

[+ WilliamM]

One of the best productions of My Fair Lady I have seen.

 

Which productions?

[edjames]

1976 Broadway - Ian Richardson and Christine Andreas

1993 Broadway - Richard Chamberlain and Melissa Errico

2007 New York Phil with Kelli O'Hara and Kelsey Grammar

and

1987 revival of Pygmalion with Peter O'Toole and Christopher Plummer

[+ WilliamM]

@edjames, we have seen different productions.

 

For Me:

 

1981 Broadway: Rex Harrison

2001 London: Jonathan Pryce

[edjames]

So? What does this have to do with the price of coffee in Brazil?

 

I only mentioned other productions as a reference that this was not my first My Fair Lady rodeo. I know the show. I know the score. I've seen good and bad.

My focus, as usual, is not in the past but in this current production at LCT.

Now when you get to the theater and you've seen the show, I'll listen to what you have to say.

[+ WilliamM]

So? What does this have to do with the price of coffee in Brazil?

 

I only mentioned other productions as a reference that this was not my first My Fair Lady rodeo. I know the show. I know the score. I've seen good and bad.

 

My focus, as usual, is not in the past but in this current production at LCT.

Now when you get to the theater and you've seen the show, I'll listen to what you have to say.

 

 

Wow. I asked you because i have never seen a good production of "My Fair Lady," including Pryce in London and the Harrison revival.

[+ WilliamM]

My focus, as usual, is not in the past but in this current production at LCT.

 

 

Martin was the original star of "One Touch of Venus."

 

I assume Melissa Errico was just as good in the Encores! version because Paula Laurence said so in the Saturday afternoon discussion. Paula worked with Mary in "Venus."

 

That's the reason to pay attention to other productions of shows; it gave Errico something important to remember.

[edjames]

Today's NYTimes, Jessie Green called it "plush and thrilling"....

 

Review: Whose ‘Fair Lady’? This Time, Eliza’s in Charge

By JESSE GREEN. APRIL 19, 2018

Lauren Ambrose, at center, letting loose at the racetrack in the Lincoln Center Theater revival of “My Fair Lady.”

Poor Eliza. It’s not enough that her own father sells her for five pounds to the bully phonetician Henry Higgins. Or that Higgins strips her of her ragged clothes and Cockney accent so she can become a refined if useless lady.

No, the former flower girl is also a failure of feminism, if recent criticism is to be believed.

Don’t believe it.

The plush and thrilling Lincoln Center Theater revival of Lerner and Loewe’s “My Fair Lady” that opened on Thursday at the Vivian Beaumont Theater reveals Eliza Doolittle as a hero instead of a puppet — and reveals the musical, despite its provenance and male authorship, as an ur-text of the #MeToo moment. Indeed, that moment has made “My Fair Lady,” which had its Broadway premiere in 1956, better than it ever was.

• It was always good, of course, one of the gleaming artifacts and loveliest scores of the Golden Age of American musical theater — a canon now being contested, with cause, for its unenlightened sexual politics.
   
  Yet for all of the wrangling over abuse and objectification in “Carousel,” “Kiss Me, Kate” and other midcentury titles, “My Fair Lady” is a totally different beast, a satire of class and gender privilege rather than a harrowing drama or lightweight romp about them. In avoiding those extremes, “My Fair Lady” always seemed egalitarian enough, but perhaps too cool and refined for its own good: a perfect musical, not a great one.
   
  

Ms. Ambrose, in flower-seller mode, meeting Harry Hadden-Paton as Henry Higgins.CreditSara Krulwich/The New York Times

I’m not so sure anymore. The director Bartlett Sher’s production uses the current climate of re-examination not only to restore the show’s feminist argument — so lively in the George Bernard Shaw play “Pygmalion,” on which it’s based — but also to warm it up considerably. He achieves this with only minor additions to the text, all drawn from the 1913 original or from Shaw’s screenplay for the 1938 film starring Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard. Fittingly, the effect of these tweaks, along with some major nonverbal alterations, is transformative.

 

So is Lauren Ambrose as a feral and then luminous Eliza. At first, Ms. Ambrose concentrates, perhaps too hard, on Eliza’s unlikeliness as the subject of a bet between Higgins and his friend Colonel Pickering. (Higgins wagers that he can pass Eliza off as a duchess after six months’ re-education.) She squints and lumbers and makes hay of the “bilious pigeon” sounds that drive Higgins to distraction.

 

But she is also laying the groundwork for our understanding that Eliza is as powerful a woman as her circumstances permit. It is she who seizes the moment of a chance meeting, outside the Covent Garden opera house where she sells violets to the swells, to make changes she has clearly been imagining for years. She is not the ivory Galatea of the Pygmalion myth, sculpted by a man who despises real women. She sculpts herself, with Higgins as her tool.

 

We understand this not only from the ferocity of her interactions with him but also from the way she sings. The big revelation of this production is that Ms. Ambrose has a stirring voice: lustrous and rich if without the bright ping of most Elizas. That turns out to be an advantage. She delivers her first number — “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” — very quietly and with an intense longing that digs beneath its surface charm to find its stillness and steel.

 

This sets “My Fair Lady” off in a new direction. The question quickly becomes not whether Eliza will succeed — of course she will — but whether Higgins can accept her success. Will he join her in it, or get out of the way?

Both outcomes seem possible in Harry Hadden-Paton’s wily interpretation, which puts the character’s mansplaining, blowhard ways in context. Younger than the typical Higgins (but more the age Shaw imagined), Mr. Hadden-Paton,best known for playing unambiguous good guys on “Downton Abbey” and “The Crown,” makes sense of the character’s on-off switch of vulnerability and hauteur. He is a baby.

 

This makes him more coherent and potentially more forgivable; he, too, is a captive of his gender and class. As Ms. Ambrose’s Eliza completes her metamorphosis, increasing in stature and radiance and vocal power, he grows more baffled and petulant, more protective of his privilege.

 

That privilege is on full display in this typically deluxe Lincoln Center Theater production. It has by now become almost unremarkable — until you look elsewhere on Broadway — that the company has sprung for 29 musicians to play the original, unimprovable orchestrations by Robert Russell Bennett and Phil Lang. Mercifully, the excellent work of the music director, Ted Sperling, is preserved in Marc Salzberg’s understated and naturally balanced sound design.

 

Balance if not understatement is the production’s visual hallmark too; Mr. Sher alternates between very spare, contemporary stage pictures and Higgins’s imposing (and rotating) Wimpole Street townhouse. This alternation provides the wow factor we expect at Lincoln Center — the house heaves into view like the ship in Mr. Sher’s 2015 production of “The King and I” — but also serves a thematic purpose.

 

At every turn the designers (sets by Michael Yeargan, costumes by Catherine Zuber, lighting by Donald Holder) ask us to consider the economic contrasts that govern Eliza’s world. Higgins’s home is a sybarite’s mansion, crowded with servants and modern art. The scene in which Eliza practices her shaky new identity at the opening day of the Ascot races — one of the greatest comic sequences in all musicals — is a gorgeous study of silver and lavender in elegant, forbidding silhouettes.

• And though Diana Rigg as Higgins’s mother is the definition of luxury casting, as a former Eliza (in the 1974 West End “Pygmalion” with Alec McCowen) she automatically suggests a kinship with her son’s pupil that locks their cross-class solidarity into place. A suffragist march that winds through one of the ensemble scenes underlines the idea.
   
  Such telltales of a feminist reading are not merely opportune; they are accurate to Shaw’s intent. It was he who had Pickering ask whether Higgins is a “man of good character where women are concerned” — to which Higgins in essence responds: There’s no such thing. Higgins, for all his brutishness, understands that relations between the sexes have been hopelessly muddled by social constructs of gender and class; as a wealthy intellectual he can try, as Shaw did, to abstain from the mess entirely.
   
  But “My Fair Lady,” being a classic musical and thus nearly synonymous with romance, keeps complicating that resolve. Infamously, Lerner and Loewe borrowed the ending that was tacked onto the 1939 film without Shaw’s prior approval: the one in which Eliza returns to Higgins’s study as if to become his helpmeet if not his wife.
   
  I don’t want to spoil this marvelous, redemptive revival’s resolution of that discrepancy. But Mr. Sher’s final image shows how history — even if it took 100 years — would eventually start to outgrow its brutes, and how it still might do so compassionately, by teaching them a lesson.
   
  

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

Sher did a wonderful job of dusting off another classic and making it feel modern: A cliche, yes, but there's no other way to describe it.

 

Paton as Higgins was revelatory. He created his own character, veering away from the Rex Harrison stamp and- for me- stole the show. Ambrose, while charming, did not bring an ease to Eliza that I would have liked to see. Until 'The Rain in Spain,' she missed a lot of the timing to really bring the laughs out of the script. It feels as if she's the kind of actress who needs ample time to warm up the engine before really delivering a blast-off performance. With a character like Eliza, you've got to grab the audience right away... She didn't. However, her singing voice was unexpectedly enjoyable and the sound board operator did her a great justice with some volume/dynamic sweetening in all the right places.

 

Supporting cast: Just hand the TONY to Butz now. It's so satisfying to watch a true showman sell a song like that.

 

 

Heading back to see it in early May

[BroadwayDave]

Bought a ticket for this as the last of the shows I’ll be seeing this summer in NYC. Snagged a front row center Loge seat.

 

So now it’s: 1) “Hello, Dolly!” twice (with Bernadette and Bette), 2) “The Band’s Visit”, and now 3) “My Fair Lady”. Wish I had more time and money!

Edited May 2, 2018 by BroadwayDave

[+ BenjaminNicholas]

Saw it again this past weekend. I stand a changed mind on Ambrose. She's an entirely different Eliza now.

 

From previews to the frozen show, she's giving a much more spitfire performance. Her voice is now confident. Her comedy is landing. Her dramatic stuff was always strong and considering that My Fair Lady is really more of a play with music, the two leads really tear into the script beautifully.

 

Best of all, the audience was dead silent when they needed to be

[bostonman]

She's an entirely different Eliza now.

 

That's practically the plot of the show itself.

[BroadwayDave]

Downloaded the new cast album from iTunes this morning, can’t stop listening to it. Absolutely gorgeous! Can’t wait to see the show in August.

 

https://www.broadwayrecords.com/cds/my-fair-lady-2018-broadway-cast-recording

[BroadwayDave]

Listened to it all day at work for the past two days. Favorite tracks so far are “I Could Have Danced All Night” and “On The Street Where You Live”, both gorgeous!

[+ beethoven]

I watched the 1938 movie version of Pygmalion with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller. I hadn't realized that so much of Shaw's dialogue was used in the musical. Cathleen Nesbitt had a small part in the movie, that of "A Lady."

I know I could look this up on IMDB.com, but didn't she play Rex Harrison's mother in the musical?

 

I saw the Lincoln Center production last week. I just sat there with a big goofy grin for the entire first act. OMG, this is SO wonderful!!! I totally agree with Foxy; Broadway Dave, you are going to love it!!

[bostonman]

I know I could look this up on IMDB.com, but didn't she play Rex Harrison's mother in the musical?

 

Indeed she did, though you meant IBDB lol.

 

For me, Mrs. Higgins has one of the best retorts in the show, at the end of her scene late in Act 2 - "Bravo, Eliza!"

[BroadwayDave]

This was on another website and I wanted to share the information:

 

My Fair Lady 7/4 at 8pm discount code...

 

Use LCTJULY4 at Telecharge Offers for $72 seats