Vanessa Redgrave Departs MY FAIR LADY Following a 'Stretch of COVID'

Vanessa Redgrave has played her final performance in the West End production of My Fair Lady. The actress, who played Mrs. Higgins in the limited engagement, writes that she "needs a rest following a stretch of Covid." Heather Jackson takes over the role in the production's final weeks.

The company features Harry Hadden-Paton as Henry Higgins, Amara Okereke as Eliza Doolittle, Stephen K Amos as Alfred P Doolittle, Malcolm Sinclair as Colonel Pickering, Maureen Beattie as Mrs Pearce, and Sharif Afifi as Freddy Eynsford-Hill.

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Directed by Bartlett Sher, this sublime production, which premiered in the spring of 2018 at Lincoln Center's Vivian Beaumont Theater, was the winner of the Tony Award for Best Costume Design, 5 Outer Critics' Circle Awards including Best Musical Revival, the Drama League Award for Outstanding Musical Revival, and the Drama Desk Awards for Best Musical Revival and Costume Design. The London production will feature 36 musicians from the English National Opera's award-winning Orchestra playing Frederick Loewe's ravishing score making it the largest orchestra in the West End.

My Fair Lady tells the story of Eliza Doolittle, a young Cockney flower seller, and Henry Higgins, a linguistics professor who is determined to transform her into his idea of a "proper lady". But who is really being transformed?

With a book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe, My Fair Lady boasts a score including the classic songs "I Could Have Danced All Night," "Get Me to the Church on Time," "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," "On the Street Where You Live," "The Rain in Spain," and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face."

Adapted from George Bernard Shaw's play and Gabriel Pascal's motion picture Pygmalion, Lerner & Loewe's My Fair Lady premiered on Broadway in March 1956, winning 6 Tony Awards including Best Musical, and becoming the longest-running musical in Broadway history at the time. Following this success, the production transferred to London in 1958, where it played in the West End for five and a half years.