Breaking the mold
MY FAIR LADY Day 2
August 30
Today Jenny Cartney, our music director, and the cast continued to work through the music. Certainly MY FAIR LADY has one of the most recognizable scores of any musical. The original production ran for six years, and has already seen three major revivals on Broadway. The songs have been recorded by several artists — “I Could Have Danced All Night” alone has hundreds of recordings. Of course, this kind of acclaim and history come along with certain expectations. In the past, lavish costumes and sets have been used to depict the Edwardian world that Higgins and Eliza inhabit. I’m sure that much like myself, many of you have Cecil Beaton’s costumes from the film imprinted in your mind. And who can forget the sound of the full orchestra on the Original Broadway Recording?
Well, like any classic done at Signature, you should definitely expect the unexpected! Our production features two pianos instead of the full orchestration, a stunningly simplistic set by Jim Kronzer, and costume designs by Jenn Miller that definitely break the mold. The physical world is like no MY FAIR LADY I’ve ever seen. Over the past two days — through the music rehearsals, design presentations, and first read through with Sally and Andrew — the Cecil Beaton designs and “Harrisonism’s” are slowly being stripped from my mind. This promises to be a very unique production. It took rereading the script and these first two days of rehearsal to remind me that under all those lavish costumes and gigantic sets there’s always been a brilliant play and characters. After all, MY FAIR LADY is adapted from a script by one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th Century, George Bernard Shaw (much of MY FAIR LADY comes directly from Pygmalion.) It really is a very intimate story, and the physical world created by Signature’s designers and the intimate two-piano score only help to bring focus where it should be, back to Eliza and Higgins. As has come to be expected of Signature and Eric Schaeffer, I promise you’ll see a very unique and striking production that’ll leave you with a very different and refreshed view of MY FAIR LADY.
Matthew Gardiner
Assistant Director
August 30
Today Jenny Cartney, our music director, and the cast continued to work through the music. Certainly MY FAIR LADY has one of the most recognizable scores of any musical. The original production ran for six years, and has already seen three major revivals on Broadway. The songs have been recorded by several artists — “I Could Have Danced All Night” alone has hundreds of recordings. Of course, this kind of acclaim and history come along with certain expectations. In the past, lavish costumes and sets have been used to depict the Edwardian world that Higgins and Eliza inhabit. I’m sure that much like myself, many of you have Cecil Beaton’s costumes from the film imprinted in your mind. And who can forget the sound of the full orchestra on the Original Broadway Recording?
Well, like any classic done at Signature, you should definitely expect the unexpected! Our production features two pianos instead of the full orchestration, a stunningly simplistic set by Jim Kronzer, and costume designs by Jenn Miller that definitely break the mold. The physical world is like no MY FAIR LADY I’ve ever seen. Over the past two days — through the music rehearsals, design presentations, and first read through with Sally and Andrew — the Cecil Beaton designs and “Harrisonism’s” are slowly being stripped from my mind. This promises to be a very unique production. It took rereading the script and these first two days of rehearsal to remind me that under all those lavish costumes and gigantic sets there’s always been a brilliant play and characters. After all, MY FAIR LADY is adapted from a script by one of the greatest playwrights of the 20th Century, George Bernard Shaw (much of MY FAIR LADY comes directly from Pygmalion.) It really is a very intimate story, and the physical world created by Signature’s designers and the intimate two-piano score only help to bring focus where it should be, back to Eliza and Higgins. As has come to be expected of Signature and Eric Schaeffer, I promise you’ll see a very unique and striking production that’ll leave you with a very different and refreshed view of MY FAIR LADY.
Matthew Gardiner
Assistant Director
posted by Matt Gardiner at
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