My Fair Lady to Return to Broadway After Long Hiatus

My Fair Lady is back on Broadway!

After a nearly 25-year absence, the Tony-award winning play is set for a revival next spring, and it will be directed by the king of midcentury theatre, Bartlett Sher. In 2015, Sher directed the revival of The King & I, which won a Tony Award for best musical revival. He also directed the well-known and very popular midcentury classic Fiddler on the Roof. André Bishop, the artistic director of Lincoln Center Theater, thinks Sher is the perfect director for My Fair Lady. “Bart has this very interesting ability to zero in on the themes of an old musical that seem to apply to today,” Bishop told The N.Y. Times. “He has his own spin, yet clearly honors the original intention, which is why people like him so much.”

The first production of My Fair Lady opened on Broadway in 1956, and starred the great Julie Andrews and Rex Harrison. When it closed in 1962, it was the longest-running show in Broadway history with 2,717 performances. The show periodically returned to Broadway through the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. Many people are familiar with the classic story, which features blue-collar flower seller Eliza Doolittle taking speech lessons from Professor Henry Higgins, in part because of the 1964 film adaptation starring Audrey Hepburn and Harrison, reprising his stage role. Apparently, Julie Andrews was denied the role of Eliza Doolittle because she wasn’t well-known enough at the time—the irony! My Fair Lady won a stunning eight Academy Awards, and thankfully no one has yet attempted to do a remake—emphasis on “yet.”

The Broadway revival of My Fair Lady is set to begin previewing on March 22, 2018, with a premiere date of April 18, 2018 at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater—find out more here. The show’s cast has not yet been announced. We would like to recommend that Sher pull from the cast of Hamilton.