MY FAIR LADY AT FOOTHILL COLLEGE IN LOS ALTOS

MY FAIR LADY
FOOTHILL COLLEGE’S NEW LOHMAN THEATRE


If you see nothing else this year, treat yourself to this delightful jewel box production of everyone’s favorite musical, My Fair Lady in the brand new Lohman Theater on the Foothill College campus.
I have seen this musical performed at least a dozen times in big theaters and tiny auditoriums with professional casts, amateur groups and one unforgettable grade school travesty in Edinburgh when Henry Higgins was barely 4 feet tall and had to secure his trousers with a belt under his arms. Each performance paints this highly visual production with different colors, but no matter how it is done, it enchants the audience. Who can forget Freddy’s heart rendering love song, “On the Street Where you Live.” Who does not smile when Henry Higgins asks, “Why Can’t a Woman be more like a Man?”
It is not an easy task to take a show almost everyone has seen and transform it into something new and refreshing but director Jay Manley has done just that. This production is not a panorama of extravagant dance numbers and complicated orchestral accompaniment. Instead it has become a personal, one on one communication with an audience so close to the actors that they feel part of the action on stage.
The production inaugurates Foothill’s very impressive state-of-the-art Lohman Theater with a thrust stage and almost perfect acoustics. All 155 seats have a clear view of the stage. “It is my hope that our very up-close-and-personal presentation will reveal the play’s richness in ways that may illuminate and surprise even those very familiar with My Fair Lady’s more-typically ‘grand’ predecessors,” says Manley.
Manley selected this particular musical to launch the new theater because he considers it a classic of its kind. The story is based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, an intimate drawing room comedy and 70 % of the text was taken from that play. It has been said that the reason we adore musicals is that they combine pathos and comedy and put it all to music. This production proves the point. The lines are choice, the concept that anyone can transform a person into something better simply by changing his speech patterns and social conduct is one we all do not want to believe, but in our hearts we wonder if this is so. Is it money and social standing that makes the person? Can an education make you better than someone else?
This musical proves otherwise and all of us cheer feisty Eliza Doolittle when she offers Henry Higgins money to teach her to speak “proper” so she can have her own flower shop. All of us cheer when she throws Higgins’ slippers at him and marches out the door. And we weep with relief when the two are back together accepting each other for exactly who they are.
It has always been my belief that the best and most exciting talent is not always on the Broadway stage but just as often in our own communities and Jay Manley has proven me correct every time he stages one of his fabulously extravagant and amazing productions on the Foothill Theater stages. It is no wonder he has won so many Bay Area Theater Critics Circle awards, but no award can express what he has done for the Bay Area Community as a whole. He has shows the least of us that we each have a special gift and we need not be afraid to share it with others. Manley has taken students from the drama classes at Foothill and opened their eyes to their own immense capabilities. He has put them on stage with expert direction, professional scenic and costume design and their performances have equaled anything I have ever seen in New York or San Francisco.
This production is no exception. There is only one equity actors in the cast, Kit Wilder as Henry Higgins and on a scale of ten I give him at least a fifteen. He never once went out of character. His immense energy set the pace for the others and he held the audience in the palm of his hand. Mindy Lym‘s performance equaled his. Her Eliza Doolittle is the most touching and beautiful portrayal I have ever seen and the two of them lift this production t to heights rarely if ever seen in a college theater. Every member of this immense cast is unforgettable and the sum total is an evening you will never forget. The show is a musical bon-bon with Cathleen Edwards costume creations so delicious you want to take them home and the creative backdrops deigned by Joe Ragey.
Seeing is believing. Treat yourself to a glorious confection presented with style and imagination with a lot to say about who we are and, what we really want and what we finally get.
WHERE: Foothill College, Lohman Theater, 12345 El Monte Road (El Monte Exit off Hwy 280). Adjacent parking, Lot 8.
WHEN: Thursdays-Saturdays, 8 pm
Sunday matinees: 2 pm
Through March 16
TICKETS: $24-$10. Box Office 650 949 7414
foothillmusicals.com