A Black Eliza Doolittle

I think the time has come when accepting a very competent singing and acting African American actress to portray Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady. How about Brian Stokes Mitchell as Professor Higgins, at least he can really sing all the intended notes that Rex Harrison and others have talked them. Perhaps a black Mama Rose or Mame? There are many Black, Hispanic, and Asian children who aren't listening to rap or hip hop but the classical original cast albums of yesterday and dreaming of playing those roles. Who says they can't? Enjoying a performance no longer depends on race but talent. I hope we see more opportunities for minorities to take on classical musical roles.

This is a bit tangential - not totally applicable to the topic, but I think it's worth mentioning Bedlam's brilliant production of Pygmalion a few months ago, which featured an Indian Actress as Eliza. She spoke with a thick Indian accent rather than a Cockney one, and they even changed the lines to reflect her changed origin. It was a brilliant move on so many levels; it added new layers of meaning and relevance to the piece, particularly with the intersectionality of race and class. And it was especially interesting when you consider that there is a such a big Indian population in London today.

The Shaw Festival did an "updated" Pygmalion with a person of color as Eliza. The only lines changed were to update references to amounts of money. It worked very very well. Harveen Sandhu

I would love it. It seems for many years soprano ingenue roles have been closed off to people of color for the most part- Cosette, Christine, Glinda, Johanna, Maria in WSS. Les Misérables in London only this year cast a Black British Cosette (there had previously only been one u/s on Broadway). There has only been one black Christine in the 32 year history of Phantom, and only two Asian Christines outside of Japan and Korea.

There is the line about Karpathy coming to the conclusion that Eliza is a Hungarian princess. This could be played for laughs or indicate that Karpathy is incompetent.

And the complaining by other users about reverse racism begins in 3...2...1!

When do the current leads leave? I don't think the current production relies on name recognition. The understudies are well liked. It seems like Harry could be replaced by someone well known but Eliza could be unknown.

If we're talking about women of color, I still pray we get to see Phillipa Soo take on the role someday.

So it seems it's already been done and worked fine.

Looks like some people were spoiling for a fight.

Remember, for someone to take the bait, someone else has to be doing the baiting...

I think it would work fine until Eliza gets to Ascot and the Embassy Ball. The whole point of those scenes is that she is able to "pass" as upper class with some degrees of success. A woman of color would never pass, regardless of her diction.

Higgins whole point is that only language and graceful behavior separates class, but that is only true as long as we are talking about white people. Once race enters the picture, forget language. The entire premise crumbles.

It's hard to do a play where class matters and ask the audience to ignore the character's race.

EdEval said: "Enjoying a performance no longer depends on race but talent."

Then why a post where you pick 1 race for a role?

"an African American actress to portray Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady".

Which excludes many other races. Not really appropriate when you claim to want to cast on talent only.

CallMeAl2 said: "I think it would work fine until Eliza gets to Ascot and the Embassy Ball. The whole point of those scenes is that she is able to "pass" as upper class with some degrees of success. A woman of color would never pass, regardless of her diction.

Higgins whole point is that only language and graceful behavior separates class, but that is only true as long as we are talking about white people. Once race enters the picture, forget language. The entire premise crumbles.

It's hard to do a play where class matters and ask the audience to ignore the character's race."

In the current production, Freddie and his mother (both seen in the Ascot scene) are played by black actors. Karpathy, the Hungarian, is played by an Indian actor.