To celebrate Opera Australia’s 60 anniversary, Dame Julie Andrews is heading to Sydney in 2016 to direct a 60 anniversary production of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s musical My Fair Lady – the latest co-production between Opera Australia and producer John Frost (following South Pacific, The King and I and the Helpmann Award-winning Anything Goes, soon to open in Sydney). It was her second Broadway role and the one that helped launch her career.
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The Audrey Hepburn starrer 1964 flick based on the story had bagged eight Oscars, including the best picture and best director. It may seem like the most unlikely pairing, since Lady Gaga teamed up with Tony Bennett, but Gaga dared to defy how others viewed her by singing “Sound Of Music” at the Academy Awards.
A reimagining of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, My Fair Lady charts Doolittle’s transformation from a street hawker to a society lady, under the tutelage of phonetics professor Henry Higgins.
In a statement, the actress said that she was thrilled, adding, “I look forward to…beginning the process of bringing this great musical to life once again”. She had made her Broadway debut in The Boy Friend in 1954 and two years later won the role of a lifetime as Eliza in the original Broadway cast of My Fair Lady.
It will be featured as a celebration of Opera Australia’s 60th birthday.
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The upcoming theater production will premier in August, 2016. “I am delighted and it is indeed a privilege to work with Dame Julie Andrews as she creates a new My Fair Lady that will capture the magic of the world’s greatest musical for a new generation of classic musical lovers”.
