Hale's "My Fair Lady" to focus on original source's wit and "clever" characters

WEST VALLEY CITY — It can be an intimidating challenge to restage a record-setting, classic musical that won six Tonys and eight Oscars for the subsequent film version.

But director Chris Clark has a firm vision for Hale Centre Theatre’s “My Fair Lady.” He found vitality in the musical’s source, the George Bernard Shaw play, “Pygmalion.”

“I was more inspired by the play, ‘Pygmalion,’ than I was ‘My Fair Lady,’ the movie,” Clark said. “ ‘My Fair Lady’ is really just ‘Pygmalion’ with some amazing songs added on to it.”

While it’s widely known that the British playwright’s acclaimed 1912 play begat the musical, the general public is less aware of a 1938 film of “Pygmalion” that was a financial and critical success, winning an Oscar for best screenplay and three other nominations.

“It’s just such a terrific play,” Clark said. “It has such a great message, and it’s so well written. The play is so witty and the characters are so funny and clever.”

Clark worked to incorporate an authentic “spirit of the place” into the production. For the past six years, he has led student theater tours to London. Knowing he would be directing “My Fair Lady, he visited the play’s various locations during last year’s excursion, taking notes and photographs that influenced his staging.

The story revolves around Eliza Doolittle, a coarse, working-class flower peddler, who agrees to take speech lessons from phonetician Henry Higgins and become transformed, as part of a wager, from a “squashed cabbage leaf” to pass as a duchess. Eliza succeeds so well, however, that she outgrows her social station and — in a development added to the musical — even manages to get Higgins to fall in love with her.

“We don’t here have the same view of the class system that has been so prevalent in England, but the play is about self-improvement,” Clark said. “It’s about seeing beneath the surface and rising above and improving our individual circumstances.”

With some critics arguing that it is “the perfect musical,” “My Fair Lady” is viewed as one of the most intelligent romantic comedies ever produced. Shaw’s brilliant, adapted dialogue is a perfect amalgamation of well-honed wit and barbed satire, and the script closely follows the original thoughtful and poignant story.

The “My Fair Lady” score, by the incomparable Alan Jay Lerner-Fredrick Lowe team that also crafted “Camelot” and “Gigi,” adds to the musical’s richness. The numerous now-classics include “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “On the Street Where You Live,” “Show Me,” “Get Me to the Church on Time” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”

Each of the tender ballads with soaring melodies and quirky charm songs are intact in the production, but Clark worked with the musical’s copyright holder to “streamline” the show from a three-hour running time to just over two hours.

“Most people won’t notice the changes,” he said. “The show moves very quickly; the story is told with an urgency. It’s great for a modern audience.”

Rarely have so many minutes in a theater been passed as enjoyably as with “My Fair Lady.”