My Fair Lady

The aim of Asolo Rep’s production: to experience Lerner and Lowe’s famous musical, My Fair Lady, as if seeing it for the first time, on opening night, without reference to the icons who have played well-known and loved roles in it. Under Frank Galati’s direction, all the elements blend afresh. But they lead to the discovery of something old: what Shaw was seriously saying in his play on which the musical is based. (Much of it parallels circumstances of today’s world.)

The setting, England of 1912, is tough on people who have not learned to speak their language correctly but especially hard on a young girl raised like Eliza Doolittle. Her cockney tongue spirals her to the lowest of social classes. She’s poorly schooled, without a stable home, and with poor or no chances to better herself, whether financially or socially.

Yet Eliza has a strong sense of her abilities and worth. It leads her to challenge herself by way of being a counter-challenge to the self-centered, privileged but talented and genuinely hard-working phonetics expert, Prof. Henry Higgins. She’s an offer he can’t refuse. And he’s greatly helped by a new friend, able fellow phonetician Col. Pickering. Though he has accepted Higgins’ wager that he can turn Eliza in six months into a lady accepted by high society, Pickering treats her as such from the start.

Scenes of lessons learned -- in Higgins’ study, his mother’s home at tea time, the Ascot opening race -- culminate in Eliza’s test. At an important Embassy ball she blends in beautifully (in the operative sense of the word). Admired by royalty, as by all, she fools language expert Zoltan Karpathy into thinking her of the same cut. Having captivated perhaps everyone, however, Eliza’s prospects for her future have changed. Particularly iffy now, her relationship to Higgins and vice-versa must reach a conclusion... Happily, that happens!

Andrea Prestinario’s presence as Eliza, even at various stages of speaking, is as remarkable as her ringing soprano voice, realistically dramatizing lyrics. Jeff Parker also displays the latter gift, blending song with statements in a completely unstudied manner. He’s so energetic that his Higgins never appears to be an “older man” in romantic relation to the vibrant Eliza.

Eliza’s gumption seems obviously inherited from her dad, Alfred Doolittle, not one to be trifled with as interpreted by Andrew Boyer. He’s a rough rascal in riches as in rags but still fun to hear turning “middle class morality” on its ear.

His opposite in every way, Joel Hatch’s Col. Pickering is a consummate gentleman and scholar.

Penny Slusher seems right at home making Higgins’ household a home as Mrs. Pearce. She’s always likeable. So is Peggy Roeder’s Mrs. Higgins, who doesn’t let social position stand in the way of her humanity.

Sean Effinger-Dean’s Freddy Eynsford acts sincere, thus likeable in his quest for Eliza’s hand. He sings a fine “On the Street Where You Live” and without seeming silly in a reprise of it. As his mother, Ann Morrison makes her observations pertinent. A bit over the top playing Zoltan, Bryan Torfeh yet fits nicely into the Cockney group, for whom Cliff Roles is an affable pub bartender.

Ensemble members are all important in a cast with 19 actors to perform what twice as many originally did, in some cases as supporting singers or dancers or servants or Cockneys but not in all roles. The cast here never disappoints. It helps that Josh Rhodes’ choreography is uncomplicated but on the mark. Also Mara Blumenfeld’s costumes and Michelle Hart’s hairdos and wigs individualize characters during all the doubling. The costumes on the rich, by the way, could not be richer.

As for the musicians, they are unbeatable. As they meld dialogue scenes with musical ones, so does the scenic use by designer Russell Metheny of metal arches that frame scenery. It’s realistically rendered or constructed with metal tubing (balcony niches, stair, a central back stairway) and displays symbolic drops (like large art-deco green tiles backing a gazebo) or makes silhouettes with the help of James Sale’s lighting.