Review: MY FAIR LADY at Rochester Broadway Theatre League

"My Fair Lady" is a story that has become ingrained into American storytelling in countless iterations over the past 60 years. Debuting in 1956 and putting icon Julie Andrews on the map, it went on to be adapted into the also-iconic Audrey Hepburn vehicle in 1964, and the story's main narrative beats have been repurposed in everything from "Pretty Woman" to "Trading Places" to "She's All That" in the years since. It opened Tuesday at Rochester's Auditorium Theatre.

"My Fair Lady" is a musical based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play Pygmalion, with a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe. The story concerns Eliza Doolittle (Shereen Ahmed), a Cockney flower girl who takes speech lessons from professor Henry Higgins (Laird Mackintosh), a phonetician, so that she may pass as a lady. Higgins tells language expert Col. Hugh Pickering (Kevin Pariseau) that, given enough time, he could teach Eliza to speak English well enough for her to be taken for a duchess. The story follows Eliza throughout the tutoring process, to a "test run" at the Ascot Racecourse, and finally to the embassy ball.

The production of "My Fair Lady" currently playing at the Auditorium Theatre checks all the boxes that one seeks to be checked when buying tickets to this classic, or any show from Broadway's Golden Age (which also encompasses "Oklahoma", "Carousel", "Annie Get Your Gun", etc.). The orchestra is massive and sweeping, a far cry from the handful of synthesizers that populate the pit bands of today. The cast is huge (and thankfully, diverse), in stark contrast to the musicals of the last 15-20 years in which playwrights often intentionally keep casts small in order to minimize budgets and maximize the likelihood of being produced. And, most notably, the music is superb, with standouts like "I Could Have Danced All Night", "With a Little Bit of Luck", and "Wouldn't it be Lovely" just as joyful and foot-tapping as the cast recordings you've been listening to for decades. The phrase "they just don't make them like this anymore" certainly comes to mind.

Of course, one can't expound on "My Fair Lady" without acknowledging the many ways in which the show has aged like milk since its 1956 debut. Not this production specifically, but the characters and gender politics embedded into the show's DNA. I'm certainly far from the first critic or theatergoer to note that Henry Higgins is a paternalistic, deplorable character who more-or-less terrorizes Eliza from the overture to the curtain call, and the show ends with no redemption arc, no apology, no lightbulb moment in which he sees the error of his ways. And maddeningly, Eliza swoons for him regardless, falling into his arms as the orchestra plays its final notes. It's a tough pill to swallow, despite this troubling narrative being draped in soaring music and frequent levity.

Notwithstanding the somewhat problematic nature of "My Fair Lady", it is one of the most beloved musicals in the American theatre canon, and the production currently running at the RBTL is a familiar nod to this well-known classic. It's playing at the RBTL's Auditorium Theatre until Saturday, February 27th, for tickets and more information click here.

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