Entertainment

The Nederlanders plot the revival of ‘My Fair Lady’

Ralph Fiennes could make a fine Henry Higgins, but it would be his first musical.

Ralph Fiennes could make a fine Henry Higgins, but it would be his first musical. (Nick Harvey/WireImage)

Producers of a “My Fair Lady” revival are searching for a star cast — hoping to replicate the success of the 1956 original led by Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews. (
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Summer doldrums have set in along much of Broadway, but over at the Nederlander Organization, which owns nine theaters in Times Square, the midnight oil is burning.

The Nederlanders are planning a multimillion-dollar revival of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s “My Fair Lady” in 2014, and right now they’re trying to line up a cast.

They’ve already got Bart Sher on board to direct. He won a Tony a few seasons back for his elegant and stately production of “South Pacific,” so “My Fair Lady,” another classic from the Golden Age of Musical Theater, seems his cup of English breakfast tea.

Playbill and other Web sites reported earlier this year that everyone’s first choice to play Eliza Doolittle was Anne Hathaway, fresh from her Oscar-winning performance in “Les Misérables.” Colin Firth, an Oscar winner for “The King’s Speech,” was rumored to be in the running for Henry Higgins.

Perfect casting on both counts.

Alas, getting stars to commit to a run of more than six months on Broadway is difficult. Everybody wants the Bette MidlerTom Hanks model. Both just wrapped up hugely successful runs in “I’ll Eat You Last” (Midler) and “Lucky Guy” (Hanks). They were on the boards for just 12 to 16 weeks, sold millions of dollars worth of premium-priced seats, pocketed a nice chunk of change and now get a vacation.

The formula works for straight plays but not musicals. The production cost of “Lucky Guy” was $3.3 million. “My Fair Lady” will cost $12 million, possibly $14 million.

You don’t have to be the head of Citibank to figure out that, to make money on a $14 million show, you’re going to need your star a lot longer than 16 weeks.

Hathaway and Firth can’t commit to more than six months, so the Nederlanders have had to look elsewhere.

Ralph Fiennes has emerged as a contender for Henry Higgins. As far as I can tell, he’s never done a musical before, but he’s a fine actor, and as Rex Harrison famously proved, a good actor can talk-sing his way through “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”

As for Eliza, my candidate would be the gorgeous Laura Benanti. I caught her act at 54 Below last month, and she was as poised as she was funny. I don’t know what she’d be like as Eliza the poor flower seller, her face smudged with soot, her hair a nest for birds, a ratty shawl around her shoulders. Or, for that matter, what she’d sound like doing a Cockney accent. (American actors attempting Cockney accents tend to sound like Dick Van Dyke in “Mary Poppins.”) But I know she’d take our breath away gliding across the stage in a ball gown and singing “I Could Have Danced All Night.”

The Nederlanders’ partners on “My Fair Lady” are Roger Berlind (“City of Angels,” “Kiss Me Kate”) and legendary record producer Clive Davis.

There’s a nice bit of history here: Davis’ mentor was Goddard Lieberson, the head of Columbia Records, who produced the recording of “My Fair Lady,” which many musical theaters lovers think is the greatest original cast album ever (count me among them).

Davis writes engagingly about Lieberson and his particular genius as a record producer in his recent memoir, “The Soundtrack of My Life.”

And for a full account of the famous “My Fair Lady” recording session, I urge you to pick up “The Street Where I Live,” Lerner’s urbane autobiography.

Lerner thought the album would sell 50,000 copies. In fact, it remained at the top of the charts for two years, selling more than 1 million copies.

I listened to it over the weekend, and I’ve been bouncing around with “The Rain in Spain” in my head ever since.

Can’t wait for the revival!