Broadway in Chicago Presents MY FAIR LADY Review – London as a Lonely Planet

When it comes to musical theater standards, overtures for the orchestra have gone the way of nylon stockings and neckties for the audience. Contemporary composers tend to dig right into their score. But My Fair Lady, Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 musical that turned Henry Higgins and Eliza Doolittle into household names, greets its 2022 crowd at Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre the old-fashioned way – with a composite of show numbers.

What follows the introduction in this revival may come as a surprise. Instead of a visually luxuriant view of Edwardian London, we are met with a stretch of cloudy sky above and a solitary figure of flower girl Eliza below. The cloudy sky towers over many scenes, and the solo image of the heroine also recurs. She operates as an outsider, craving “a room somewhere” that offers plenty of coals, chocolates and a head resting comfortably on her knee.

My Fair Lady’s Class Demarcation

The stage quickly fills with scenery and characters that place Eliza at the gates of Covent Garden’s opera house in Edwardian London. Class is as sharply demarcated on a public street as it is in a private home. Every word and every physical gesture convey the hardened attitudes of the highborn and the lowborn, interacting without ever sharing space.

Derived from George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 stage play Pygmalion, My Fair Lady now serves as a Mid-Century stepping stone to Upstairs, Downstairs and Downtown Abbey. Lerner’s libretto is untamed by feminist or classist sensitivities, and Bartlett Sher’s production doesn’t interfere with the story of Professor Higgins’ retraining of Eliza to pass as a lady in British society.

Broadway in Chicago Production Boxes without Gloves

Professor Higgins’ raw egotism and Eliza’s vigorous response become a boxing match without gloves. Noting her Cockney accent, Higgins sings:

By law she should be taken out and hung

For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue.

Later, responding to Higgins’ teaching methods so sadistic even his household servants and colleague Colonel Pickering object, Eliza sings:

Then they'll march you, Henry Higgins, to the wall
And the king will tell Eliza, sound the call
As they lift their rifles higher
I'll shout ready, aim, fire…

WHEN:

June 28 - July 10, 2022

WHERE:

Cadillac Palace Theatre
Chicago

TICKETS:

$27+

For more information and tickets visit the Broadway in Chicago website.

Photos Courtesy of Broadway in Chicago

Note: Picture This Post reviews are excerpted by Theatre in Chicago.