Broadway NewsBroadway's New My Fair Lady Finds Its Stars in Lauren Ambrose and Harry Hadden-PatonThe Bartlett Sher production will also feature Tony winners Norbert Leo Butz and Diana Rigg.
By
Ryan McPhee
October 05, 2017
Lauren Ambrose and Harry Hadden-Paton
Lauren Ambrose, a two-time Emmy nominee for her performance in Six Feet Under, will headline the upcoming Lincoln Center Theater revival of My Fair Lady. She’ll take on the role of Eliza Doolittle under Bartlett Sher’s direction.
Diana Rigg and Norbert Leo Butz
Joining her as Professor Henry Higgins, the linguist who sets out to transform the cockney flower girl into a properly speaking British woman, will be U.K. stage actor Harry Hadden-Paton in his New York stage debut.
Performances will begin March 15, 2018, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, where the musical is set to open officially April 19.
Also announced to take on the featured roles of the professor's mother Mrs. Higgins and Eliza's father Alfred P. Doolittle are a pair of Tony winners: Game of Thrones alum Diana Rigg and Norbert Leo Butz.
The Lerner and Loewe musical would bring Ambrose and Sher together at last after the ill-fated revival of Funny Girl. Sher was to direct Ambrose in a 2012 staging, but a sudden loss of investors and producers indefinitely postponed the Los Angeles tryout and subsequent New York transfer of the commercial production.
Ambrose last appeared on Broadway in the 2009 revival of Exit the King; she made her debut in Awake and Sing!. In addition to the role of Claire Fisher on HBO’s Six Feet Under, she is known on screen for her performances in Torchwood, Sleepwalk with Me, and Dig.
Hadden-Paton heads to Broadway after appearing in the West End in The Importance of Being Earnest, Flare Path, and The Pride. His screen credits include The Crown and Downton Abbey.
Butz recently starred Off-Broadway in The Whirligig. A Tony winner for Catch Me If You Can and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, he returns to LCT after a Tony-nominated turn in the short-lived Thou Shalt Not. His additional Broadway credits include Big Fish, Wicked, and Speed-the-Plow.
Rigg is no stranger to this particular story, having played both Mrs. Higgins and Eliza Doolittle in West End productions of Pygmalion (in 2011 and 1974, respectively). The stage veteran won a Tony Award in 1994 for Medea after earning nods for The Misanthrope and Abelard and Heloise. On screen, she is known for her Emmy-nominated performances in Game of Thrones (as Lady Olenna Tyrell) and The Avengers.
Featuring a book and lyrics by Lerner and a score by Loewe, the 1956 musical adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion tells the story of linguistics expert Henry Higgins and the cockney flower girl he is determined to transform into a proper, dignified woman. The score includes such well-known showtunes as “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “On the Street Where You Live,” and “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?”
Additional casting will be announced at a later date.
LCT will present the revival in association with Nederlander Presentations Inc. The production will feature the work of Sher’s frequent collaborators: costume designer Catherine Zuber, lighting designer Donald Holder, set designer Michael Yeargan, and sound designer Marc Salzberg.
