by Peter Thomas Ricci<\/p>\n
Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe\u2019s musical \u201cMy Fair Lady\u201d is among the most beloved of the classic musicals, with multiple Broadway stagings and a film \u2013 starring Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn, and directed by George Cukor, no less \u2013 to its credit. Therefore, it\u2019s hardly surprising that the Lyric Opera chose the musical as its latest exploration of the popular American songbook, and I am most delighted to report that \u201cMy Fair Lady\u201d continues the opera house\u2019s winning streak.<\/p>\n
Closely based on the George Bernard Shaw play \u201cPygmalion\u201d (indeed, much of the musical\u2019s book is lifted straight from Shaw\u2019s pen), \u201cMy Fair Lady\u201d concerns the unlikely social rise of Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl living in the margins of 1950s London. After an unlikely meeting outside the Royal Opera House with Henry Higgins \u2013 an outrageously condescending (but admittedly talented) professor of phonetics \u2013 Eliza becomes the subject of a wager between Higgins and Colonel Pickering, a fellow phoneticist. The wager: That using his ingenious methods of speech coaching, Higgins can transform Eliza from a \u201cdraggle-tailed guttersnipe\u201d into a lady, one of such refinement and sophistication that she would be confused for a duchess.<\/p>\n
What commences is pure 1950s musical heaven, with witty (and at times barbaric) repartee, sweeping character development, and a hell of a lot of wonderful songs from Lerner and Loewe, chief among them \u201cWouldn\u2019t it be Loverly?\u201d, \u201cI Could Have Danced All Night,\u201d \u201cOn the Street Where You Live,\u201d and my personal favorite, \u201cA Hymn to Him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Such fine source material, though, would not soar without the right cast and production, and the Lyric\u2019s elegant touch elevates \u201cMy Fair Lady\u201d just as it did for \u201cThe Sound of Music\u201d and \u201cCarousel.\u201d Tim Hatley\u2019s sets fill the Lyric\u2019s performing space with a modern, sophisticated air; Anthony Powell\u2019s costumes are spot on; and the orchestra, with conductor David Chase at the helm, is sharp and focused.<\/p>\n
And driving the material forward is the cast of \u201cMy Fair Lady,\u201d which lends its own stamp to the show\u2019s familiar material. As Eliza, Lisa O\u2019Hare is an absolute charmer, bringing ballerina-like grace and impeccable comedic timing to the roll; and as Henry Higgins, Richard E. Grant (who will be familiar to many patrons for his work in \u201cGosford Park,\u201d \u201cLA Story,\u201d \u201cThe Player,\u201d and other films) is an energetic, deliciously ostentatious fellow, wrapping himself around Lerner\u2019s lyrics with unrestrained glee. Another standout is Bryce Pinkham, who\u2019s soaring tenor and natural stage presence makes him a perfectly memorable Freddy Eynsford-Hill (a suitor of the reformed, elegant Eliza).<\/p>\n
Some have criticized the Lyric\u2019s musical treatments in the past, and indeed, some of those same criticisms have fallen on this production of \u201cMy Fair Lady\u201d \u2013 that the performing space is not adequate to the needs of an American musical, that the productions uncomfortably combine operatic\/musical elements, etc. And it is true that seeing a musical at the Lyric is a profoundly different experience than seeing it at, say, The Goodman, or even Theater Wit or Stage 773, but given the caliber of talent behind this production, the end result more than speaks for itself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Peter Thomas Ricci Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe\u2019s musical \u201cMy Fair Lady\u201d is among the most beloved of the classic musicals, with multiple Broadway stagings and a film […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18131,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,41,245,20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music-news","category-features","category-musical-theatre","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18129","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/18131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beintheloopchicago.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}