“My Fair Lady" at the Adler Theatre -- March 8.
Wednesday, March 8, 7:30 p.m.
Adler Theatre, 136 East Third Street, Davenport IA
Lauded by Entertainment Weekly as “a sumptuous new production of the most perfect musical of all time,” Lincoln Center Theater's and director Bartlett's Sher's touring presentation of My Fair Lady takes to the Adler Theatre stage on March 8, this comedy romance by the legendary composing team of Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe also hailed by the New York Times as “thrilling, glorious, and better than it ever was.”
Based on George Bernard Shaw's timeless play Pygmalion, My Fair Lady has endured for decades as a beautiful musical about transformation, patronage, gender politics, and class. In the show, professor and confirmed bachelor Henry Higgins makes a wager with his linguistic colleague Colonel Pickering that in six months he can pass off “gutter snipe” Eliza Doolittle as a duchess at an embassy ball. Through arduous training, day and night, Eliza learns how to speak English “properly,” and transforms into a lady respected and adored by all classes. Along the way, she also bewitches young Freddy Einsford-Hill into falling in love with her, and convinces a supposed linguistics expert that she is royalty. Through her transformation process, Eliza forges a deep connection with Colonel Pickering and most especially with Professor Higgins. However, she finds herself in a difficult position, now too refined to go back to her old life and not with any means or desire to live life as a lady of leisure – especially by herself.
Boasting such classic songs as “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “The Rain in Spain,” “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” and “On the Street Where You Live,” My Fair Lady enjoyed an initial 1956 Broadway run was a notable critical and popular success, with the show going on to win six Tony Awards including Best Musical. It set a record for the longest run of any musical on Broadway up to that time and was followed by a hit London production, both of which starred Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. In 1964, the movie version of Lerner & Loewe's smash was a critical and commercial success, becoming the second-highest-grossing film of the year and winning eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director for George Cukor, and Best Actor for Harrison. In 1998, the American Film Institute named My Fair Lady the 91st greatest American film of all time, and eight years later, Cukor's film was ranked eighth in the AFI's Greatest Movie Musicals list.
The national tour of My Fair Lady comes to Davenport's Adler Theatre on March 8, admission to the 7:30 p.m. performance is $43-83, and tickets are available by calling (800)745-3000 and visiting AdlerTheatre.com.
