Theater Review: “My Fair Lady” offers genteel comedy with a touch of satire

Good Company Players’ “My Fair Lady” playing at Roger Rocka’s Dinner Theater through Nov. 16, brings the tuneful charm one expects from this beloved classic. Yet beneath the elegant hats, lilting waltzes, and Cockney accents lies a story that still nibbles—if no longer bites—at questions of class, gender, and self-determination. This production, directed by Elizabeth Fiester, finds its footing not in big flourishes or technical spectacle, but in the character work of a few standout performances and the clever satire that hums beneath the surface.

For those fully unversed in musical theater, “My Fair Lady” follows a lower-class London flower girl named Eliza Doolittle whose “offensive” Cockney accent is taken on as a project by a bombastic phonetics professor, Henry Higgins. Higgins makes a bet that he can teach her to speak so well she can pass as a lady in high society. From there Higgins pushes, prods, and bullies Eliza into improving her elocution and social graces. In return, Eliza hopes for an improvement of her lot in life. Of course, things rarely turn out as planned. 

“My Fair Lady” is an American musical theater standard for a reason. It has clever lyrics and hummable tunes by Lerner and Lowe. It also has the potential for big spectacle in terms of design and staging, but can also be elastic enough to scale down. For Good Company Players, scaled down is the option best suited. David Pierce’s set manages the interior and exterior locations well and without fuss, while Ginger Kay Lewis-Reed’s costumes are suitably selected for the period. Fiester’s staging on the small Roger Rocka’s corner stage is at its best in Higgins’ study but occasionally feels hemmed in. 

Triple-threat of performances

None of this hampers the performances of the principal cast, though. 

Terry Lewis, as the ever-demanding Higgins, embodies a delightfully satirical persnicketiness. (Full disclosure: Lewis is a colleague and a personal friend, so I’ll keep this about Higgins.) Higgins is a man so devoted to his own intellect that he nearly trips over it, and Lewis leans into the absurdity, exposing Higgins as both a figure of ridicule and of sympathy: a man undone by his own arrogance. 

As Higgins’ experiment in transformation, Haleigh Cook brings an earthiness to Eliza that makes her relatable. In the first act, Cook’s voice is a diamond of clarity just behind Eliza’s rough “Gorns!” and “Aaayows!” which elevates songs like “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly?” and “I Could Have Danced All Night.” In the second act, she trades lyrical sweetness for a steeliness grounded in Eliza’s emerging self-awareness. Eliza’s arguments with Higgins are some of the zippiest scenework in the show. Her transformation feels not like a fairy-tale makeover but a reclamation of a dignity she didn’t always realize she had. Cook’s Eliza becomes that rarity for her class at the time: a woman with choices. She’s perhaps the only character in this polite society to truly evolve.

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Teddy Maldonado nearly steals the show as Alfred P. Doolittle, the dustman-philosopher who cheerfully sidesteps the moral burdens of the middle class. With a casual step and a roguish grin, Maldonado’s “With a Little Bit of Luck” and “Get Me to the Church on Time” are undeniable highlights. His Doolittle does a lot, serving as both comic relief and a sly counterpoint to Higgins’ intellectual snobbery. He dances through life’s inequities with a freedom that the upper classes, for all their refinement, can’t seem to grasp.

Genteel comedy

That tension—the naturalness of the poor versus the pretensions of the rich—sits at the heart of “My Fair Lady.” Adapted from George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion,” the musical smooths Shaw’s sharp class satire into a more genteel comedy of manners that never bothers to hurry all that much. The story’s oft-debated resolution places Eliza not among the aristocrats nor with the poor, but within the educated middle class—the realm where a woman like her might find, if not wealth, then agency and a measure of happiness.

If the GCP production occasionally lacks the vim and verve that could make its scenes soar, it compensates with wit, clarity, and charm. The trio of Lewis, Cook, and Maldonado—joined by the ever-amiable Roger Christensen as Col. Pickering—offer enough twinkle and jig to make for an evening of agreeable pleasure.

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