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Michelle Knight, as Eliza Doolittle

Philip Nolen, as Henry Higgins

The Orlando Philharmonic, in collaboration with Mad Cow Theatre, presents a concert staging of Lerner & Loewe’s smash Broadway musical, My Fair Lady., on Saturday, May 8 , with performances at 2:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m., at the Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre, 401 W. Livingston Street, downtown Orlando.

Hailed as one of the greatest musicals of all time, My Fair Lady is the timeless story of Professor Henry Higgins, the crotchety, middle-aged bachelor and phoneticist and Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl, who becomes part of his experiment in order to transform herself into a “lady.” The story is based upon George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion with book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner and music by Frederick Loewe.

Maestro Christopher Wilkins leads the orchestra in this classic musical featuring stage direction by Alan Bruun, Artistic Director of Mad Cow Theatre. This is the fifth collaboration between the Orlando Philharmonic and Mad Cow Theatre.

Featured performers include: Michelle Knight (Eliza Doolittle), Philip Nolen (Henry Higgins), Karel Wright (Mrs. Higgins), Jacob Haines (Freddy Eynsford-Hill), Mark Lanier (Colonel Pickering) and Michael Edwards (Alfred P. Doolittle).

Audiences will enjoy favorite hits including: I Could Have Danced All Night, Get Me to the Church on Time, Wouldn’t it Be Loverly, The Rain in Spain and I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.

Julie Andrews Wouldn’t it Be Loverly – Click Here for YouTube video

Audrey Hepburn as Eliza The Rain in Spain scene – Click Here for YouTube video

Audrey Hepburn with I Could Have Danced All Night – Click Here for YouTube video

On The Street Where You Live from the movie – Click Here for YouTube video

To listen to the interview on the Smith & Riley show with Michael Edwards, who plays Alfred P. Doolittle, Click Here.

Insights from Alan Bruun, Mad Cow Theatre ~ Stage Director

My Fair Lady is arguably one of the greatest achievements in musical theatre, blending superb music and lyrics to a extraordinary plot from Gorge Bernard Shaw.  A classic in every sense of the word, My Fair Lady is also that rare commodity – the intelligent musical. Lerner and Loewe managed to illuminate the souls of the beautiful, headstrong Eliza, the brilliant, caustic Higgins, and the two worlds that collide when they meet. And they have succeeded in creating a musical where the words and music are equal partners, just as like Higgins and Eliza.

Insights from Christopher Wilkins, Orlando Philharmonic ~ Music Director

Damn, damn, damn, DAMN!  By George… pull out the stopper, let’s have a whopper… you’ll never know what made it so exciting … but oh, the towering feeling… like breathing out and breathing in!

My Fair Lady is – end to end – memorable lines and unforgettable tunes.  Is it the perfect musical?  Story, book, lyrics, and music – all seem as perfect today as they did when My Fair Lady opened at New Haven’s Shubert Theatre at the out-of-town tryout on February 4, 1956.  The subsequent Broadway production set a new record for the longest running major musical theater production in Broadway history.

My Fair Lady’s seeming perfection is the result of combined genius.  Never has a Broadway musical enjoyed a finer or more felicitous collaboration of so many gifted artists.  To the list of its legendary creators – George Bernard Shaw, Alan Jay Lerner, and Frederick (Fritz) Loewe – we must add the names of Robert Russell Bennett and Philip J. Lang.  They were to Broadway orchestration what George Bernard Shaw was to the English language.  Every tune and lyric finds delicious and ingenious expression in their experienced hands.

The music Bennett and Lang dressed up so stylishly had come to them perfectly tailored in the first place.  Composer Fritz Loewe was born to a Viennese family deeply immersed in operetta.  Loewe’s father was a major star, having played the leading man (Danilo) in the premiere performance of The Merry Widow. Emigrating to New York with his family in 1924, Fritz Loewe pursued a variety of jobs including cattle punching, gold mining, and prize fighting.  In short, he put himself through a crash course in Americana.

Fritz Loewe’s life-long dream was to write for Broadway.  The opportunity came shortly after meeting lyricist Alan Jay Lerner at the Lambs Club in Manhattan in 1942.  Loewe’s roots in Viennese operetta and his prodigious musical gifts (at age 13 he had been the youngest piano soloist ever to appear with the Berlin Philharmonic) prepared him perfectly for creating a musical adaptation of Shaw’s Pygmalion. He had developed a touch elegant enough to match Shaw’s language, a rich palette of musical styles to draw from, and a sophisticated understanding of how to wed music to poetry.

Mad Cow Theatre and Artistic Director Alan Bruun have created a production to match the show’s illustrious pedigree.  In fact – REALLY BIG NEWS – the Mad Cow/Orlando Philharmonic performances of My Fair Lady will feature the original costumes created by Cecil Beaton.  Beaton (another name to add to our list of brilliant creators of the original production) designed the costumes for both the play and film versions of My Fair Lady. For his efforts, he won both a Tony Award and an Academy Award.

My Fair Lady is already among the best-selling performances in Orlando Philharmonic history.  For Gawd’s sake, get you to the Carr on time!  Or as Eliza Doolittle – before her linguistic makeover – would say, “Move your blooming arse!!”

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