Want a full house? Schedule “My Fair Lady,†Lerner and Loewe’s engaging 54-year-old musical. Rhinebeck’s Center for Performing Arts was packed, Sunday, with matrons, teenaged girls (one wearing jeans and tottering about on pink satin heels), grandparents, tykes, all kinds of people, all ages.
For this story about a Cockney flower girl and the linguistics professor who changes her life by altering her accent may have originated with George Bernard Shaw, an Irishman. And it may be about Brits and their particular prejudices. But “My Fair Lady†certainly feeds Americans’ conviction that moving up in the world is more birthright than miracle. And while stepping up a rung or so may not happen often, it certainly ought to.
The show opens with Prof. Henry Higgins noting Eliza Doolittle’s whinnying locutions in London’s Covent Garden, damning the “demeaning and disgusting noises†she makes.
Her “cold-blooded murder of the English language,†he tells us, keeps her in her place, the gutter, “not her ragged clothes and dirty face.â€
Lou Trapani, not as airy and aristocratic as Rex Harrison who originated the role of Henry Higgins, makes the professor deeply eccentric and supremely certain that speech nails people to class and that men are indisputably better than women.
Chris Kilroy is another towering performer who plays Eliza’s father, the disreputable Alfred P. Doolittle, dragged miserably up in the world by his original views on morality.
These two actors, both vigorous and canny performers, leaveTeresa Byrons’ Eliza in theatrical twilight until this character, employing a mix of gutter- and aristospeak comes into her own at tea with Freddy Eynesford Hill (Matthew Woolever) and the professor’s mother, Mrs. Higgins, regally played by Rona Havasapian.
This is a fine production and in the end, the spirit of one little flower girl soars as she learns the extraordinary power of manners and speech.
“My Fair Lady†runs at The Center for Performing Arts in Rhinebeck, NY, through May 23. Call 845-876-3080 or go to www.centerforperformingarts.org.
