MY FAIR LADY comes to the London Coliseum
by Best of Theatre Staff on Friday 19 November 2021, 8:00 am in Upcoming and New Shows
New York’s Lincoln Center Theater’s critically acclaimed and multi award-winning production of Lerner & Loewe’s much loved MY FAIR LADY will transfer to the London Coliseum for a limited summer engagement in what will be the first major West End revival of the show for 21 years. The season comes as part of the ongoing celebrated tradition of summer musicals at the London Coliseum. The perfect way to celebrate London’s theatre scene as it blossoms once more after the pandemic. Performances begin on 7 May 2022 with an opening night on 18 May 2022.
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 the English National Opera’s award-winning Orchestra playing Frederick Loewe’s ravishing score.
Bartlett Sher said: “Getting a chance to revisit Shaw's extraordinary story of class and privilege in a new age, and especially for London audiences, is a rare and special event. And I am also thrilled to be back at the ENO and the Coliseum, a perfect space for this epic musical.”
“Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady has returned to Broadway in a smashing new production from Bartlett Sher (The Sound of Music, The King and I).”
The Guardian
“Lavish revival of Lerner and Loewe’s 1956 masterwork…”
The Washington Post
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”.
“Thrilling! Glorious and better than it ever was! A marvellous and transformative revival.”
New York Times
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.
MY FAIR LADY has seen many notable revivals and adaptations, including the acclaimed 1964 film starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison, which won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Most recently on the London stage, Cameron Mackintosh’s 2001 revival at Theatre Royal Drury Lane won three Olivier Awards, and later toured across the UK and Ireland in 2005.
James L. Nederlander, Jamie Wilson, Hunter Arnold, Playful Productions and the English National Operapresent the Lincoln Center Theater production ofLerner & Loewe’s MY FAIR LADY at the London Coliseum, with sets by Michael Yeargan, costumes by Catherine Zuber, lighting by Donald Holder, sound by Marc Salzberg, original musical arrangements by Robert Russell Bennett and Phil Lang, and dance arrangements by Trude Rittmann.
Full casting for the London production will be announced in due course.