 MY FAIR LADY
Book and Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner: Music by Frederick Loewe
Adapted from George Bernard Shaw's play and Gabrial Pascal's motion
picture Pygmalion.
Original production directed by Moss Hart
Mark Hellinger Theatre, New York - March 15, 1956 (2717 perfs)
Theatre Royal Drury Lane - April 30, 1958 (2281 perfs)
Synopsis
A Professor of phonetics, Henry Higgins is listening to the
various speech patterns of the people outside St Paul's Church
in Covent Garden, London. He bumps into an old colleague, Colonel
Pickering, who has long admired the work that Higgins has achieved
in the field of phonetics. Overhearing the strong cockney accent
of a flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, Colonel Pickering wagers Higgins
that he cannot turn Eliza from a cockney flower girl into a lady
who will be accepted by the upper classes as one of their own.
Intrigued by the challenge and confident of his own ability,
Higgins installs Eliza into his home and proceeds to coach her
and try to turn her into the lady that Pickering has challenged.
Meanwhile, coal-man Alfred Doolittle, Eliza's father, always one
with an eye to the main chance, learns of the situation and attempts
to capitalise on the events unfolding. He is unsuccessful.
More successful, however, is Higgins. Eliza is learning how to speak
and act as an upper-class lady. She is taken to the social event
of the season, the race meeting at Ascot where she manages to charm
everyone - in spite of the odd lapse in speech - and especially a
young man by the name of Freddy Eynsford-Hill.
Later she attends a magnificent ball where she is studied most intently
by one of Higgin's ex-students, Zoltan Kaparthy who suggests to all
around that Eliza is obviously a member of a European noble family.
Once again Eliza has carried off the deception but receives no praise
or acknowledgement of her achievements from Higgins. Deeply upset
by his lack of feeling she leaves his home to stay with his mother,
Mrs Higgins.
In the meantime, Alfred Doolittle has become something of a philosopher
- and made some money into the bargain - and is lured into marriage
by his long-time sweetheart.
Higgins cannot understand Eliza's actions and visits her at his
mother's home where he is told, in no uncertain terms, by her that
he is a rude, selfish, egomaniac. He leaves and back in his study
muses over he differences between a woman and a man. The door opens
and Eliza is back. Irascible as ever, Higgins demands his slippers
as the curtain falls!
The flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, grubby daughter of a drunken dustman,
is taken under the wing of Professor Higgins.
With assiduous work the arrogant Higgins does succeed in turning
Eliza into an elegant debutante; but then he finds he can't live
without her.
The lust Cockney dances in Covent Garden, the languid gavotte of
the nobs in Ascot, the glitter of the Embassy Ball, the touching
exaltation of Could Have Danced All Night- these are now world-famous
set pieces that never lose their appeal.
Everyone, everywhere, has become accustomed to her face, but no
one could ever find MY FAIR LADY anything other than one of the greatest
musical shows ever conceived.
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