“My Fair Lady” revival to bow on Broadway after 25-year absence

PanARMENIAN.Net - A My Fair Lady revival on Broadway — oh, wouldn't it be loverly?

It's been a quarter-century since My Fair Lady was last revived on Broadway, but lovers of the great musical classics will have their prayers answered when the Lerner & Loewe jewel opens in April 2018 in a Lincoln Center Theater production staged by Tony winner Bartlett Sher, The Hollywood Reporter reveals.

No casting has been announced, but Sher will reassemble his regular design collaborators for the revival, including Michael Yeargan (sets), Catherine Zuber (costumes) and Donald Holder (lighting).

That team was responsible for two of the most exquisite musical revivals of recent years, South Pacific and The King and I, also produced by LCT. Both those shows won Tony Awards for best revival, burnishing Sher's reputation as the pre-eminent interpreter of American musical classics, with a knack for digging deep beneath the surface to find the dramatic heart of the material and characters.

Based on the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion, My Fair Lady features a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The original Broadway production, directed by Moss Hart, starred Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. It won six Tonys and ran for 2,717 performances, making it at that time the longest-running Broadway musical in history.

The story of a cockney flower girl passed off as aristocracy as part of a bet between phonetics scholar Professor Henry Higgins and his chum Colonel Pickering also became a screen classic in 1964, with Harrison reprising his stage role alongside Audrey Hepburn. Directed by George Cukor, the film won eight Oscars including best picture.

The show's score includes such evergreen songs as "I Could Have Danced All Night," "On the Street Where You Live" and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face."

LCT will team with Nederlander Presentations on the revival, which will begin performances March 22, 2018, at the Vivian Beaumont Theatre, with official opening night set for April 19. The musical was last seen on Broadway in a 1993 production that starred Richard Chamberlain and Melissa Errico.