Theater review: Orpheum's 'My Fair Lady' wraps a radical notion in a beautiful package

A confession: In college, I often woke up to the 1987 London Symphony Orchestra recording of "My Fair Lady," sung by Kiri te Kanawa and Jeremy Irons.

Thus, I was both excited and a little apprehensive to see Trevor Nunn's much-ballyhooed London revival.

Would the show, which opened Wednesday night at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis, live up to the advance hype, not to mention my memories and dreams?

Yes and yes. Even with some opening-night sound and follow-spot miscues, Nunn's exquisite production gladdened my heart. The show has beautiful staging, lovely singing, Matthew Bourne's gorgeous choreography and Anthony Ward's fetching costumes.

I've always admired the very American argument in Shaw's "Pygmalion," the source material for "My Fair Lady," that a person's station at birth was not determinative. That is still considered a radical idea in some class-stratified societies.

Of course, Prof. Henry Higgins (Christopher Cazenove), an erudite troglodyte, makes an unlikely egalitarian. Arrogant and abusive, he decides to give elocution lessons to flower vendor Eliza Doolittle (Lisa O'Hare), not for her own benefit but as a bet with his friend, Col. Pickering (Walter Charles). To Higgins, the ambitious young woman he calls a "guttersnipe" and "crushed cabbage leaf" is a project, not a person.

After Eliza is presented to society at the end of their trying six-month course in which she has also learned social grace, all the congratulations flow to Higgins. Eliza stands like a sad sack, albeit a beautifully dressed one, in a dim corner.

O'Hare does an outstanding job of showing Eliza's changes. While she is a little over-the-top in some of her early physical gestures, she delivers with a sweet, winning soprano, starting with her first song, the reverie "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?"

Cazenove doesn't have the charm of a Rex Harrison (who does?), but his Higgins is winning nonetheless. On opening night, he seemed to have a little vocal strain in the second act.

The night's most hilarious moment is "With a Little Bit of Luck," the theme song for Eliza's besotted, responsibility-shirking father, Alfred. Director Nunn and company have added banging- and dancing-on cans to this number. With wildly entertaining mega-ham Tim Jerome playing Alfred, it becomes an energetic showstopper.

A major disappointment was that Marni Nixon, the vocal double for Audrey Hepburn in the classic screen version of "My Fair Lady," was unable to perform opening night, reportedly because of a family emergency. Her replacement, Cathy Newman, acquitted herself beautifully, as did Justin Bohon as Eliza's suitor Freddy. They help this "Fair Lady" to really sing.

Rohan Preston • 612-673-4390