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My Fair Lady

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This article is about the stage musical. For the 1964 film see My Fair Lady (film), and for the manga see The Wallflower (manga).
My Fair Lady
Original Broadway Poster by Al Hirschfeld
MusicFrederick Loewe
LyricsAlan Jay Lerner
BookAlan Jay Lerner
BasisGeorge Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion
Productions1956 Broadway
1958 West End
1964 Film
1976 Broadway revival
1979 West End revival
1981 Broadway revival
1993 Broadway revival
2007 Broadway concert
AwardsTony Award for Best Musical

My Fair Lady is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe, based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion. The show's 1956 Broadway production was a smash hit, setting a new record for the longest run of any major theatre production in history. It was followed by a hit London production, a popular film version, and numerous revivals. It has been called "the perfect musical."[1]

Background and productions

In the mid 1930s, film producer Gabriel Pascal acquired the rights to produce film versions of several of George Bernard Shaw's plays, Pygmalion being one of them. He approached lyricist Alan Jay Lerner to write the musical adaptation, and Lerner agreed. He and writing partner Frederick Loewe began writing, but they quickly realized that the play seemed incapable of obeying the rules for the construction of a musical. First of all, there was no place for an ensemble. Secondly, there was no subplot or secondary love story. Pygmalion has just one story, and it is a non-love story. Many people, including Oscar Hammerstein II, told Lerner that converting the play to a musical was impossible, so he and Loewe abandoned the project for two years. During this time, the collaborators separated, Gabriel Pascal died, and the American musical theatre changed. When Lerner read Pascal's obituary, he found himself thinking about Pygmalion again, and when he and Loewe reunited everything seemed to fall into place. All the insurmountable obstacles that stood in their way two years earlier had disappeared with the transformation of the musical theatre, and they excitedly began writing the show.

The musical had its pre-Broadway tryout at New Haven's Shubert Theatre[1] and, starting on February 15 1956, for four weeks, at the Erlanger Theatre in Philadelphia before opening on March 15 1956 at the Mark Hellinger Theatre in New York City. It ran for 2,717 performances, a record at the time. The original cast, directed by Moss Hart and choreographed by Hanya Holm, included Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, Stanley Holloway, Robert Coote, Cathleen Nesbitt, John Michael King, and Reid Shelton. Edward Mulhare and Sally Ann Howes replaced Harrison and Andrews later in the run.

The show's title was derived from one of Shaw's provisional titles for Pygmalion, Fair Eliza. However, when Rex Harrison protested that Lerner and Loewe's originally proposed title, Fair Lady, was too femininely sympathetic, the show's authors added the possessive pronoun "My" to appease the temperamental star. This also made for a pun on "Mayfair lady", which is how the title sounds when pronounced with a Cockney accent. The original Playbill and cast recording sleeve featured artwork by Al Hirschfeld, who depicted Eliza as a marionette being manipulated by Henry Higgins, whose own strings are being pulled by a heavenly puppeteer resembling George Bernard Shaw.

The West End production, in which Harrison, Andrews, Coote, and Holloway reprised their roles, opened on April 30 1958 at London's Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, where it ran for 2,281 performances.

The show has been revived on Broadway three times - in 1976, directed by Jerry Adler, with Ian Richardson, Christine Andreas, and George Rose; in 1981, with Harrison and Milo O'Shea; and in 1993, with Richard Chamberlain, Melissa Errico, and Paxton Whitehead.

The show also had a West End revival in 1979 at the Adelphi Theatre with Tony Britton, Liz Robertson, Dame Anna Neagle, Richard Caldicot, and Peter Land. Produced by Cameron Mackintosh, it was first directed by Robin Midgley and then by the Lerner himself, and choreographed by Gillian Lynne. Mackintosh again produced the show in 2001 at the Royal National Theatre and later the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, with Martine McCutcheon as Eliza Doolittle and Jonathan Pryce as Professor Henry Higgins. This revival won three Olivier awards: Best Actress in a Musical (Martine McCutcheon), Outstanding Musical Production and Best Theatre Choreographer (Matthew Bourne).

In 2007 the New York Philharmonic held a full-costume concert presentation of the musical. The concert had a four day engagement from March 7th to 10th at Avery Fisher Hall. It starred Kelli O'Hara as Eliza Doolittle, Kelsey Grammer as Professor Henry Higgins, Charles Kimbrough as Colonel Pickering and Brian Dennehy as Alfred Doolittle.

Synopsis

Henry Higgins, an arrogant, irascible professor of phonetics, boasts to fellow linguist Colonel Pickering that he can train any woman to speak so properly that he could pass her off as a duchess, including Eliza Doolittle, a poor girl with a strong Cockney accent whom he encounters selling flowers in Covent Garden. (In the terms currently used by linguists, and which did not yet exist in the period of the show, Higgins proposed to take a speaker of basilect and teach her to speak acrolect.) Pickering is intrigued by Higgins's boast and wagers that he cannot make good on his claim. Higgins takes on the challenge and begins an intensive make-over of Eliza's speech, manners and dress in preparation for her appearance at the Embassy Ball.

Complicating matters is Eliza's father, Alfred P. Doolittle (Stanley Holloway), a cheerfully amoral and drink-loving dustman, who shows up to extract money from Higgins for compromising Eliza's virtue. Higgins is impressed by the man's natural gift for language and his brazen lack of moral values ("Can't afford 'em!") and flippantly recommends Doolittle to an American millionaire who is seeking a lecturer on moral values. In the end, Doolittle gets a surprise bequest of four thousand pounds a year from the millionaire, raising him uncomfortably into middle-class respectability.

Meanwhile, Eliza endures speech therapy, endlessly repeating phrases such as "In Hertford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly ever happen” (to demonstrate that "h"s must be aspirated) and "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain" (to emphasize the "a"). Just as things seem hopeless, she suddenly "gets it" after Higgins eloquently speaks of the glory of the English language, and thereafter her speech is transformed into an impeccable upper class English accent. For her first public tryout, Higgins takes her to Ascot Racecourse, where she makes a good impression with her polite manners but shocks everyone by her vulgar Cockney attitudes and slang (thus establishing one of the show's themes, that good elocution is only "skin deep.") However, she still captures the heart of an eager young man named Freddy Eynsford-Hill.

The final test hinges on Eliza's passing as a lady at the Embassy Ball, which she does successfully, despite the presence of a Hungarian phonetics expert who seeks to unmask her identity. After the ball, Higgins's ungrateful boasting of his triumph and his pleasure that the experiment is now over leave Eliza feeling used and abandoned. She walks out on him, leaving the seemingly clueless Higgins mystified by her ingratitude. But Higgins soon realizes his feelings for her--that he has "grown accustomed to her face." When Eliza tentatively returns to him, the musical ends on an ambiguous moment of possible reconciliation between teacher and pupil.

Song list

My fair lady around the world

The musical has been translated into many languages and Eliza speaks Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, Amsterdam, and Prague dialect. Here is Higgins' linguistic exercise and well-known song "The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain" in various languages:

  • Czech: "Déšť dští ve Španělsku zvlášť tam kde je plán"
  • Danish: "En snegl på vejen er tegn på regn i Spanien"
  • Dutch: "Het Spaanse graan heeft de orkaan doorstaan"
  • Finnish: "Vie fiestaan hienon miekkamiehen tie"
  • French: "Le ciel serein d'Espagne est sans embrun"
  • German: "Es grünt so grün wenn Spaniens Blüten blühen"
  • Hebrew: "ברד ירד בדרום ספרד הערב" ("Barad yarad bidrom sfarad haerev")
  • Hungarian: "Lent délen édes éjen édent remélsz"
  • Icelandic: "A Spáni hundur lá við lund á grund"
  • Italian (Version 1): "La rana in Spagna gracida in campagna"
  • Italian (Version 2): "La pioggia in Spagna bagna la campagna"
  • Polish: "W Hiszpanii mży, gdy dżdżyste przyjdą dni"
  • Portuguese: "O rei de roma ruma a Madrid"
  • Russian (Version 1): "На дворе трава а на траве дрова" ("Na dvorye trava a na travye drova")
  • Russian (Version 2:) "Карл у Клары украл коралы" ("Karl ooh Klariy ukral coraly")
  • Spanish: " La lluvia es maravilla en Sevilla "
  • Swedish: "Den spanska räven rev en annan räv"

Film adaptation

Main article: My Fair Lady (film)

An Oscar-winning film version was made in 1964 with Harrison again in the part of Higgins. Controversy surrounded the casting of Audrey Hepburn instead of Julie Andrews for the part of Eliza, mainly due to the fact that Hepburn's singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon for all songs except "Just you wait, Henry Higgins", in which Hepburn's voice was left undubbed durring the harsh-toned chorus of the song, but Nixon sang the melodic bridge section. Andrews won that year's Oscar for Best Actress in Mary Poppins.

Lerner in particular disliked the film version of the musical because he felt that it did not live up to the standards of Moss Hart's original direction. He also was unhappy that the film was shot entirely on the Warner Bros. backlot, rather than in London, as he would have preferred.

The musical has been spoofed by or served as an inspiration for episodes of numerous television programs, including The Addams Family, The Andy Griffith Show, Family Guy, The Simpsons, Duckman, The Nanny, Will & Grace, Doctor Who, Arthur, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, ¡Mucha Lucha!, Animaniacs,3rd Rock From the Sun and Star Trek: Voyager.

On Seinfeld, Elaine Benes's close talker boyfriend Aaron takes her, Morty Seinfeld and Helen Seinfeld to see My Fair Lady in "The Raincoats, Part 1".

In the Danny Phantom episode Splitting Images, the Box Ghost attacked him with "costumes and props from the broadway classic, My Fair Lady."

Also in an episode of Sesame Street, Oscar the Grouch sings a parody called "I've Grown Accustomed To Her Fur" after he orders a breed of dog called a Rotten-Doodle and it turns out to be a sweet and helpful female dog ironically named Cranky. In another episode, Rosita is teased about her Spanish accent and wishes that she could sound like everyone else. A pig named Henry Piggins tries to teach her how to speak by repeatedly saying "The pig is big and did a wiggly jig". Eventually she improves, and Piggins, Rosita, and Big Bird sing a parody of "The Rain in Spain" called "The Pig Is Big." Then Piggins says that he is on his way to the theatre to see PIGmailion.

Awards and nominations

1957 Tony Award nominations

1956 Theatre World Award

1976 Tony Award nominations

  • Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical - Ian Richardson, George Rose (WINNER)

1976 Theatre World Award

  • Theatre World Award - Christine Andreas (WINNER)

1976 Drama Desk Award nominations

  • Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical - Ian Richardson (WINNER)
  • Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical - George Rose (WINNER)
  • Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical - Jerry Adler
  • Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival - Produced by Herman Levin

1982 Tony Award nomination

1994 Drama Desk Award nominations

  • Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical Revival - Produced by Barry & Fran Weissler, Jujamcyn Theaters (James H. Binger: Chairman; Rocco Landesman: President; Paul Libin: Producing Director; Jack Viertel: Creative Director); Produced in association with PACE Theatrical Group, Inc., Tokyo Broadcasting System Intl., Inc., Martin Rabbett
  • Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical - Melissa Errico
  • Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design - Patricia Zipprodt

See also

Pygmalion effect

References

  1. ^ See, e.g., Steyn, Mark. Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now, Routledge (1999), p. 119 ISBN 0415922860 and this 1993 NY Times review
Awards
Preceded by Tony Award for Best Musical
1957 		Succeeded by
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