If you haven't seen this sublime Cameron Mackintosh and the National Theatre of Great Britain production of My Fair Lady yet at the Ahmanson, call for tickets now. The run ends on April 27, although you'll have a second chance when it opens for a limited run at the Orange County Performing Arts Center from June 4 to 15.
Director Trevor Nunn's version of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe's 1956 Broadway musical has a few modern touches that make this story a little more palatable for today's audiences. The choreography and musical staging provided by the witty Matthew Bourne gives the production cheeky slyness.
Based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, the musical is about language and class. Professor Henry Higgins (Christopher Cazenove) makes a bet with fellow linguist, Colonel Hugh Pickering (Walter Charles), that he can pass off a common flower girl, Eliza Doolittle (Lisa O'Hare), as an aristocrat at the annual Embassy ball after six months of phonetic training.
Nunn places us in England in 1910, the year that Edward VII died. We know this because the king dies before the Ascot race meeting. As a result, instead of seeing stark white with black accents as per Cecil Beaton's famous costume design for the movie, the whole cast is dressed predominately in black mourning clothes.
Instead of shifting with excessive gravity and reserve, thanks to Bourne, the Ascot gentlemen paw and prance like dressage horses while the ladies seem like dark trees inhabited by extravagantly plumed birds. The women's hats, designed by Anthony Ward, make this snob mob seem like snooty guests at the Mad Hatter's tea party. Flashes of green and blue against black and purple adornments and silver trim make this somber scene visually rich.
Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews originated the roles of Professor Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle on stage, but Harrison was paired with Audrey Hepburn for the 1964 film directed by George Cukor. Hepburn didn't actually sing. Marni Nixon, who was born in Altadena, provided the singing voice for the movie as she did for Deborah Kerr in the 1956 The King and I, and Natalie Wood in the 1961 West Side Story.
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