Actors - My Fair Lady

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	Actors - My Fair Lady

My Fair Lady is a 1956 musical theater production with lyrics and book by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederic Loewe. It was originally adapted by producer Gabriel Pascal into a musical from the screenplay of the 1938 movie "Pygmalion," which in turn was adapted from George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion
which was itself based on the Roman myth of Pygmalion (mythology) . The stage musical was later made into a film by Warner Bros. in 1964.

The stage musical first opened on March 15, 1956 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in New York City. It ran for 2717 performances, a Broadway record at the time.

It opened in London on 30th April 1958 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and ran for 2281 performances. It was revived on tour and on Broadway in 1980-81 with Rex Harrison repeating his role as Henry Higgins under the direction of Patrick Garland.

Moss Hart directed the musical, Cecil Beaton designed the costumes, and Hanya Holm choreographed. The original Playbill and original cast album included art by Al Hirschfeld, which depicted Eliza Doolittle as a marionette being manipulated by Henry Higgins, whose own strings are being pulled by a heavenly puppeteer who looks like George Bernard Shaw.

The songs

"Why Can't the English?"
"Wouldn't It Be Loverly?"
"With a Little Bit o' Luck"
"I'm an Ordinary Man"
"The Servants' Chorus"
"Just You Wait"
"The Rain in Spain"
"I Could Have Danced All Night"
"Ascot Gavotte"
"On the Street Where You Live"
"You Did It"
"Show Me"
"Get Me to the Church On Time"
"A Hymn to Him"
"Without You"
"I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face"

Plot

Henry Higgins, an arrogant, irascible professor of phonetics, finds an impoverished young woman, Eliza Doolittle, selling flowers, and boasts to a new acquaintance, Colonel Pickering, that he can train her to speak so "properly" that he could pass her off as a duchess. Eliza finds her way to the professor's house and offers to pay the professor to give her elocution lessons so that she can get a better job. A wager is made with Colonel Pickering that Higgins cannot achieve this and he takes her on as a challenge of his skills free of charge.

Eliza's father, a dustman, arrives three days later to reclaim his daughter, or at least some compensation for her loss, and is paid off with 5 pounds. Higgins is impressed by the man's genuineness and natural gift for language, contrasting with his total lack of moral values ("Can't afford 'em!"). From earlier on in the story, Eliza’s father Alfred Doolittle comes to her begging for beer money. Eliza is very disdainful of her father begging her for money. But after a few moments of pleading and the line “You wouldn’t send me home without a drop of liquid protection” she finally gives him some drinking money.

Eliza goes through many forms of speech therapy, such as speaking with marbles in her mouth. In addition, she repeats the phrase “In Hartford, Hereford, Hampshire, hurricanes hardly hever happen” into a machine that spouts flame if she does not drop her “H”. This exercise results in Eliza setting a piece of paper on fire, much to Colonel Pickering's surprise. Eventually after a musical number featuring the servants of Mr. Higgins, we come to the scene of Eliza Mr. Higgins and the Colonel sitting in Mr. Higgins study. Eliza protest to Mr. Higgins expectations of her, and he responds to her with a heart felt speech about the “gift of the spoken word”.

At first Eliza makes no progress, but just as she thinks the idea is hopeless she tries one more time, suddenly "gets it" when Higgins explains the value of the English language, and begins to talk with an impeccable upper class English accent. Higgins takes her on her first public appearance at Ascot Racecourse where she makes a good impression with her polite manners, only to shock everyone by a sudden and vulgar lapse into cockney. Higgins, who dislikes the pretentiousness of these upper class people, partly conceals a grin behind his hand, as if to convey the message to the audience, "I wish I had said that!"

The bet depends on Eliza's passing as a lady at the 'embassy ball', which she does successfully despite the presence of a Hungarian phonetics expert, who is completely taken in. Higgins's ungrateful treatment of her after this success leads Eliza to walk out on him, leaving the seemingly clueless Higgins mystified by her ingratitude.

The ending of the musical was subtly changed from that of the play, in order to please audiences by a suggestion of budding romance between Eliza and Higgins.

A contemporary version of the Pygmalion motif can be found in Willy Russell's play Educating Rita
(1980).

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for My Fair Lady ]

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Actors - My Fair Lady

The songs

Plot

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