Mark Knows It All

Every now and then it is fun to dust off an old chestnut, and they don’t come any older and dustier than Lerner and Lowe’s Broadway tour de force, My Fair Lady . Pittsburgh was the opening salvo of a national tour celebrating the 50th anniversary of this melody filled classic, which premiered on Broadway on March 15, 1956. (Hard to believe, isn’t it?) This is a British production based on a British 2001 revival. It is “smashing”. When I was 12, My Fair Lady was one of the first albums I purchased when stereophonic sound hit my household. My grandmother had several 78 rpm records on which parts of the score appeared on what were early Broadway compilations. The problem is that over the years I have never seen a serious production of the musical. Mostly it went from barely mediocre community theater to perfectly awful high school productions. The music was sung ad nauseum by every choral group I ever belonged to, and we sang it badly. I reached the point where I wanted to shoot that old