My Fair Lady at Wahnfried

At Wahnfried
On Sunday 23rd at 4pm we have the musical MY FAIR LADY (2h50mins) based on George Bernard Shaw's 1913 stage play Pygmalion and starring Audrey Hepburn as Eliza Doolittle and Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins, with Stanley Holloway, Gladys Cooper and Wilfrid Hyde-White in supporting roles.

A critical and commercial success, it won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director.

In this beloved musical, pompous phonetics professor Henry Higgins is so sure of his abilities that he takes it upon himself to transform a Cockney working-class girl into someone who can pass for a cultured member of high society. His subject turns out to be the lovely Eliza Doolittle, who agrees to speech lessons to improve her job prospects. Higgins and Eliza clash, then form an unlikely bond -- one that is threatened by an aristocratic suitor.

My Fair Lady holds a 95% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The consensus states: "George Cukor's elegant, colourful adaptation of the beloved stage play is elevated to new heights thanks to winning performances by Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison."

Roger Ebert gave the film four stars out of four, and, in 2006, he put it on his "Great Movies" list, praising Hepburn's performance, and calling the film "the best and most unlikely of musicals." James Berardinelli wrote in a retrospective review, "Few genres of films are as magical as musicals, and few musicals are as intelligent and lively as My Fair Lady. It's a classic not because a group of stuffy film experts have labelled it as such, but because it has been, and always will be, a pure joy to experience."