The Program in Theater of the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University presents its Fall Show, Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady, in the Berlind Theatre November 13-14 and 19-21. Based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 classic play Pygmalion, My Fair Lady is directed by faculty member Suzanne Agins ’97 and stars Laura Hankin ’10 in a production which is also serving as her senior creative thesis. My Fair Lady tells the story of Professor Henry Higgins, a phonetics specialist, and Eliza Doolittle, the Cockney flower girl he wagers he can pass off as a refined society lady by teaching her how to speak with an upper-class accent. First seen on Broadway in 1956, it is now considered one of the masterpieces of the American musical theater, brimming with such memorable songs as “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” Agins has chosen the two piano version of the show seen at the McCarter in 2004, but directs a cast twice the size of that production. Michael Cadden, Director of the Program in Theater, notes that, though the Program has produced musicals in the past, this is the first time that the annual Fall Show – professionally directed, designed, and choreographed, with a student cast – has been chosen from this genre: “Musical theater is this country’s gift to world theater – the kind of theater we’re most noted for around the globe. It’s a pleasure to produce this happy wedding of Shavian wit and American musical bravura.”
