MY FAIR LADY Revival Back On For Next Spring? — Page 14

Celia would be PERFECT.

I also think Lara Pulver might be wonderful though I'm not sure if her range is right. Did anyone see her in Parade in London or L.A.?

Updated On: 4/12/17 at 09:52 PM

wonderfulwizard11 said: "Did Benanti have notable attendance issues during She Loves Me? Lincoln Center (and Bart Sher) have at least cast her once, in Women on the Verge- I can't see how much has changed since then.



This is off topic, but did anybody hear any rumors of Kelli being offered the part of Amalia for She Loves Me? She said in an interview that “It’s one of those things where you do have to start making sacrifices. I could go right back into another show this season, and I really wanted to do it, but I couldn’t possibly do that to my kids, so it’s going [on] without me,” she said openly. “It’s heartbreaking sometimes.”(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-schonberg/broadway-star-joins-baseb_b_9519786.html.

This leads me to believe it was She Loves Me: No other show really seems likely to me. She's not castable in Fiddler On The Roof even if Sher was the director of the piece and no other show seems likely to me. Of course, she could have been talking about the 2016-2017 season, but I have a feeling she was offered the part. She did a benefit concert of it in December 2011 with Gavin Creel and Jane Krakowski, who both reprised their roles in Roundabout revival. Thoughts?

Updated On: 4/13/17 at 05:50 AM

icecreambenjamin said: "Butter Broadway said: "She's a brilliant actress, and could take singing lessons. I think she would be perfect honestly.



"

I do like her as an actress, but Eliza is an incredibly difficult singing part that is hard for even trained voices. I don't see anyone like Carey Mulligan or Anne Hathaway being able to sing this score 8 times a week.


I wouldn't say that the role is as vocally demanding as you are saying- The songs aren't incredibly difficult, though definitely not easy and require a fully trained female singer to perform well, so Hathaway and Mulligan(Although I've never heard her sing) are out of the question in my book. But there are much harder songs out there then the ones Eliza sings in My Fair Lady. It's the physical demands , the acting chops, and pulling them off as well as singing the role 8 times a week (or even less) that make the part so difficult: She has to be hugely expressive, bold, loud, and entertaining with a Cockney dialect to boot ( Which, needs to be authentic) and then transform into a prim and proper lady with not just an adequate english dialect, but a perfect one, all while showing a strong emotional journey and change from her former self to her new self and then to someone else entirely at the end. I would say that those are the things that make the role extremely challenging, not the singing, which trained singers wouldn't have huge obstacles to overcome with if they were just singing the songs outside of the context of the show.

Laura Benanti or bust. After the She Loves Me revival, this is obvious casting.

So many brilliant choices in here for Eliza! Carey Mulligan, Cynthia Erivo, Denee Benton, Phillipa Soo, Lauren Worsham, Laura Benanti, Kelli O'Hara, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Laura Osnes. Can't we have all of the above? They can do a week each!

In a recent interview with Broadway Box, Bartlett Sher had this to say about the casting of Eliza Doolittle:

"Oh my god. I don’t know yet. I honestly don’t. In the case of that one, I’m going to do one at a time. Once I find a Higgins then we’ll move to Eliza and go from there. I think the tree trunk of the show is Higgins, and I have to land what that part is and it will inform better who Eliza needs to be. I’m not the kind of director that says, ‘I need to have A,B,C,D,E.’ I’m the kind of director that knows the text and uses the opportunity of auditions to explore the piece, and in that exploration with different artists I’ll find if they bring more to me of what that text says than anyone else. Then I start to know."

http://www.broadwaybox.com/daily-scoop/seven-questions-with-tony-winning-director-bart-sher/

That is such a load of BS, very typical Broadway director spin. Both he and producers are going to cast someone who's going to do well in the role and at the box office. As successful as My Fair Lady is, it can still not succeed without popular leads in this day and age.

Updated On: 4/16/17 at 12:34 PM

Non-profits need money to survive too. There was no need for The King & I to be cast with stars and be a full-scale revival, but because it was - they are able to afford other experimental works from the money it brought it. As for built in subscriber base, I couldn't find numbers online. How many subscribers do they have? Beaumont alone is a 1100 seat theater, which makes for almost 9k seats a week.

Regarding My Fair Lady, is anyone seeing the lyric opera production later this month and in may?

Now that I think about it, Jessie Mueller would be my first choice for this. Here's her head voice in case anyone hasn't heard it (I hadnt until very recently):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DEIDQLpyhE

And she could definitely act the part.

Soaring29 said: "If Kelli is in My Fair Lady next spring, will we be seeing another Mueller vs. O'Hara race for Lead Actress?"

Unless Kelli winds up doing Kiss Me, Kate.

Well, we could see Kiss Me Kate at the Roundabout next year- Although the RTC has announced four shows for the 2017-2018 season, they have no dates for 2018 at all when you go on their website, even though they do list January, February, and March of 2018 on their calendar. Does that mean Kiss Me Kate could be on for next season?

If we can, we could see Kelli competing against Mueller anyway- Just not for My Fair Lady. Who knows? Maybe they'll both lose out to Laura Osnes or a newcomer playing Eliza. Again, we'll just have to wait and see.