My Fair Lady
Once in a while, you get a theatrical production so enchanting and capturing that you leave the theater wanting more. In My Fair Lady at the Cadillac Palace, audiences receive such a treat in this delightful performance. It's theater at its finest.
This North American tour of Lincoln Center Theater's My First Lady, based on the 1913 musical by George Shaw, Pygmalion, explores how social identity is formed through patterns of speech and appearance. My Fair Lady narrates the story of Eliza Doolittle (Shereen Ahmed), a Cockney (a native of East London, traditionally born within hearing of Bow Bells), an adolescent flower girl. By chance, she collides with a gentleman while selling flowers. She learns that a phonetician, Professor Henry Higgins (Laird Mackintosh), is penning her words, lamenting over the vulgarity of her dialect ("Why Can't the English?"). The misogynistic Higgins then proposes with the gentleman he learns to be Colonel Pickering, a distinguished retired officer and the author of Spoken Sanskrit, that within six months, he could pass off Eliza as a proper fair lady by teaching her to speak proper English.
With famous songs like "Wouldn't It Be Loverly? The Rain in Spain, I Could Have Danced All Night, and the witty songs asking the question, "Why can't a woman be more like a man" (A Hymn To Him), we suggest you run to see this splendid performance.
Shereen Ahmed, considered one of Broadway's rising stars, is the first woman of color (Arab Americans) to play Eliza Doolittle in Broadway history. Ahmed's lovely vocals enrich her glowing performance as Eliza. Canadian actor, Laird Mackintosh, is simply magical and played the role of the arrogant, dreadfully rude, and misogynistic Professor Henry Higgins to perfection. The chemistry between Shereen Ahmed (Maria in The Sound of Music, Anna in The King and I) and Laird Mackintosh (The Phantom of The Opera, 1776, Jekyll and Hyde and Mary Poppins) were brilliant, and I dare to say this performance was equally more fun and engaging than the original. Sure I wasn't born until four years after the original My Fair Lady Broadway production and was only four when the movie version hit the screens, but I've always been an old movie and play buff - so I can handle the critique and criticisms.
Known for Morning Glory (2010), Tower Heist (2011), and Legally Blonde: The Musical (2007), Kevin Pariseau handsomely played the pristine gentlemen, Colonel Pickering, who wanted assurance that Higgins was a man of good character, whereas women are concerned?
“Excuse the straight question, Higgins. Are you a man of good character where women are concerned?”
Other notable performances came from Martin Fisher. Fisher, who, being the first person of color to play the role of Eliza's father, Alfred P. Doolittle bedazzled us by playing the role of a dustman with no morals or conscience, vigorously fighting against living a life of middle-class morality to perfection. Fisher, who recently performed as Deadlust Jones in the play "The Sporting Life of Icarus Jones," nails the role of Alfred P. Doolittle with his proper dialect and singing of "With a Little Bit of Luck" and "Get Me To The Church on Time." Dare I forget the impeccable set (Michael Yeargan), costumes (Catherine Zuber), and Tour Orchestrations of Josh Clayton and John Bell ( Music Direction). The list of kudos is more than I can include.
Despite Higgins's distrustful nature and seemingly having no desire to understand women, Higgins falls in love with Eliza. And you will fall in love with Broadway In Chicago's Lincoln Center Theater Production of My Fair lady at Cadillac Palace!
Can the world survive with the misogyny of men at the helm? Unfortunately, you may not find the answer to that question in My Fair Lady. Still, you will have a wonderful night of theater discovering that the stupidity of a man's ("You Did It") understanding of women is his lack of intelligence to comprehend her value.
Let's Play Theatrical Review Highly Recommends My Fair Lady at Cadillac Palace.
Cadillac Palace
My Fair Lady
Book and Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner
Adapted from George Bernard Shaw's play and Gabriel Pascal's motion picture "Pygmalion."
Directed by Bartlett Sher
Now Playing through July 10, 2022
