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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 is a musical with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe, based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion.

Contents 1 Production 2 Synopsis 3 Song list 4 Awards and nominations 5 Film adaptation 6 Popular culture 7 Trivia 8 See also 9 External link

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 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 only has one story, and it is a non-love story. Many people told Lerner, including Oscar Hammerstein, 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 passed away, and the American musical theatre changed. When Lerner read Pascal's obituary, he found himself thinking about Pygmalion again, and when he and Fritz 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 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 2281 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, Nancy Ringham, and Milo O'Shea; and in 1993, with Richard Chamberlain, Melissa Errico, and Paxton Whitehead.

The show also had a West End revival in 2001 at Lyttelton and later Theatre Royal Drury Lane, with an original cast of 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.

Henry Higgins, an arrogant, irascible professor of phonetics who 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 encountered selling flowers in Covent Garden. 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 leaves Eliza feeling used and abandoned. She walks out on him, leaving the seemingly clueless Higgins mystified by her ingratitude. But Higgins soon realizes that he has "grown accustomed to her face". Eliza eventually tentivly returns to him, and the musical ends on an ambiguous moment of possible reconsiliation between Teacher and Pupil.

Act I

• "Why Can't the English?"
• "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?"
• "With a Little Bit of Luck"
• "I'm an Ordinary Man"
• "With a Little Bit of Luck (Reprise)
• "Just You Wait"
• "The Rain in Spain"
• "I Could Have Danced All Night"
• "Ascot Gavotte"
• "On the Street Where You Live"

Act II

• "You Did It"
• "Just You Wait" (Reprise)
• "On the Street Where You Live" (Reprise)
• "Show Me"
• "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" (Reprise)
• "Get Me to the Church on Time"
• "A Hymn to Him"
• "Without You"
• "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face"

Original Production

• Tony Award for Best Musical (winner)
• Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical (Harrison, winner)
• Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical (Andrews, nominee)
• Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical (Coote and Holloway, nominees)
• Tony Award for Best Scenic Design (winner)
• Tony Award for Best Costume Design (winner)
• Tony Award for Best Choreography (nominee)
• Tony Award for Best Conductor and Musical Director (winner)
• Tony Award for Best Direction (winner)
• Theatre World Award (John Michael King, winner)

1976 Revival

• Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical (Rose, winner; Richardson, nominee)
• Theatre World Award (Andreas, winner)
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actor in a Musical (Richardson, winner)
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical (Rose, winner)
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Director of a Musical (nominee)
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival (nominee)

1981 Revival

• Tony Award for Best Reproduction of a Play or Musical (nominee)

1993 Revival

• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Musical Revival (nominee)
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Actress in a Musical (Errico, nominee)
• Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Costume Design (nominee)

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. Hepburn had to be dubbed for the cockney scenes and songs, and Andrews got the last laugh when she won that year's Oscar for Best Actress in Mary Poppins. Lerner in particular hated the film version of the play because it did not live up to the standards of Moss Hart's original direction. He also was very upset with the fact that the film was shot entirely on the Warner backlot, rather than in its native 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 Andy Griffith Show, Family Guy, The Simpsons, The Nanny, Will & Grace, Doctor Who, Arthur, Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, ¡Mucha Lucha! 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."

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.

Pygmalion Effect

• Internet Broadway Database listing
• My Fair Lady Audition Advice & Show Information from MusicalTheatreAudition.com

Lerner and Loewe musicals
Life of the Party • What's Up? • The Day Before Spring • Brigadoon • Paint Your Wagon • My Fair Lady • Camelot • Gigi • The Little Prince