New TV: SELFIE? #fail

I'm trying to wrap my head around the meeting with TV execs where somebody pitched the idea of a new rom-com/sit-com pilot with George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion or its Lerner and Loewe musical progeny My Fair Lady as the jumping off point. I mean, why? Because you are so in love with Shaw's basic ideas of class, gender and privilege that you want to recapture it for 2014?

Well, that might be nice. Except for the fact that Selfie, the TV rom-com/sit-com stepchild in question, completely avoids those central issues, turning everything upside-down and missing the Pygmalion boat completely. So, yes, Selfie's creators did call the heroine Eliza Dooley and the hero Henry Higgs instead of Eliza Doolittle and Henry Higgins, they did make him sort of arrogant and controlling, and they set her up as someone in dire need of a makeover. But that's it. That's the extent of the Pygmalion influence. Instead of a lower class flower seller, director Julie Anne Robinson and writer Emily Kapnek, who are executive producers as well, have made Eliza a vacuous twit who has made herself a big deal on the internet. She has a gazillion friends and fans on Twitter, Youtube and Facebook and she knows her way around celebrity and fashion. But she is selfish, silly and immature. After video of her barfing on a plane goes viral, she turns to Higgs, a marketing expert, to turn her into someone new. But her makeover involves not passing as an aristocrat by way of learning a new accent or how to hold a spoon, but instead how to interact with real people and not come off as a self-centered, superficial ninnyhammer.

Say what you will, but that is not and never was Eliza Doolittle. When she successfully masqueraded as a lady, it showed the superficiality of aristocratic privilege, that she and her brain and her heart were more than equal with higher born people like Henry Higgins. When this Eliza tries to act like a real human being and not an idiot, she's showing... Absolutely nothing except that people who create their personalities around internet fame probably have feet of clay. Whoopdedoo.

Eliza's lack of appeal has nothing to do with actress Karen Gillan, by the way. Most people know her from her stint as Amy Pond on Doctor Who, where she was a decidedly different person from Eliza Dooley. Gillan has a lot of charm and energy and an acceptable American accent, and she gets a thumbs up from me for showing her versatility.

John Cho, who plays her Henry Higgs, is also charming and talented, and this role is the polar opposite of his Harold from the Harold and Kumar movies, although I suppose it  has some things in common with Sulu, the character he played in recent Star Trek movies. Henry is smart, smug and not thrilled with who Eliza is. I suppose that's okay. But when it comes to chemistry between Henry and Eliza or some reason to root for the two of them to get together -- this is, after all, a rom com -- I'm not seeing it.

A lot of commentators have been complaining about the title, although I don't think it's that awful. I think it's supposed to convey how selfish this Eliza is, which, again, means that her primary characteristic isn't like Eliza Doolittle. Is the idea of a selfie horribly dated or wrong-headed? I don't know. I doubt Selfie will be around long enough to find out. It's not the title or the lack of chemistry, but the unpleasantness at the center of Eliza Dooley's character that dooms Selfie as far as I'm concerned.

Penrod and Swiech Lead Prairie Fire's MY FAIR LADY

When My Fair Lady opens July 31, Joe Penrod and Jessie Swiech will once more be sharing a stage. Recently they've appeared as the head of the household and a lady's maid in A Little Night Music for Prairie Fire Theatre, and the head of the household and his daughter in Other Desert Cities for Heartland Theatre. This time out, Penrod will play Henry Higgins, the infamous professor who tries to turn a lowly little flower seller into a fine lady, while Swiech is Eliza Doolittle, the girl who gets caught up in Professor Higgins' makeover plan, in the Lerner and Loewe musical My Fair Lady at Prairie Fire.

My Fair Lady ran for six years on Broadway from 1956 to 1962, with a cast that featured Rex Harrison and Julie Andrews when it opened. Higgins' songs include "Why Can't the English?" and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face," while Eliza gets "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" and "I Could Have Danced All Night," as well as the spirited "Just You Wait" where she vents her frustrations with the professor.

For Prairie Fire, Todd Wineburner will take on Colonel Pickering, Higgins' friend and partner in the Pygmalion plan, while Rhys Lovell will both direct and play Alfred P. Doolittle, Eliza's dad, who always has his eye on the main chance. Alfred P. is also the one who gets to sing "With a Little Bit of Luck" and "Get Me to the Church on Time," two of the biggest hits from the score.

Henry's mother will be played by Carolyn Stucky, with Nancy Nickerson as his long-suffering housekeeper, Mrs. Pearce. Chris Walburt will appear as Eliza's other suitor, sweet Freddy Eynsford-Hill, and he will be supported by Katie Henderson, who plays his mum.

Prairie Fire's My Fair Lady has a good-sized cast, with Ben Ambler, John Bowen, Lyndsay Byers, Bailey Combes, Jeff Courtright, Lauren Guttschow, Kinsey Hamra, Grace Henderson, Amy Humphreys, Rick Jensen, Bob Mangialardi and Claire Stucky in various roles.

Performances are scheduled for Illinois Wesleyan University's Westbrook Auditorium from July 31 to August 3, with Thursday, Friday and Saturday curtains at 7 pm and Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3 pm. Those times are a little different from most venues in Bloomington-Normal, so make a note and be sure to get yourself to the theater on time. Ticket prices range from $20 for adults down to $10 for students. Click here for all the details. 

Make a Date to Try Out for MY FAIR LADY

If all you want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air, and perhaps one enormous chair, well, I have some loverly auditions for you.

Auditions for Prairie Fire Theatre's production of Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady, directed by Rhys Lovell, are scheduled for tonight and tomorrow night, June 12 and 13, from 6 to 8 pm, in Presser Hall, room 16, on the Illinois Wesleyan University campus. Lovell has added more audition dates, too, so if Monday or Tuesday, June 15 or 16, between 5 and 7 pm, fits your schedule better, that is also an option.

Lovell has already cast the mellifluous Joe Penrod, who has appeared recently in A Little Night Music with Prairie Fire and Other Desert Cities at Heartland, as Professor Henry Higgins, but all the other roles -- including the plum roles of Eliza Doolittle and her dad, the one who needs a little bit of bloomin' luck -- are up for grabs.

Eliza Doolittle, the flower girl at Covent Garden snatched up and remade by an egotistical linguistics professor in order to win a bet, has been played by the likes of Julie Andrews, in the Broadway production, and Audrey Hepburn, on film. Although Hepburn and her gorgeous costumes from the film are synonymous with Eliza in many people's eyes, she didn't actually sing the aforementioned "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?" or "I Could Have Danced All Night" or any of Eliza's famous songs. Instead, Marni Nixon dubbed them all. Audrey Hepburn still looked loverly in the Cecil Beaton-designed outfits, however.

Rex Harrison played Higgins opposite both Andrews and Hepburn, and he thanked both when he won an Oscar for the role. He also won the Tony as Best Actor in a Musical, one of six Tony Awards the musical won, including Best Musical

The film version of My Fair Lady beat that total, however, taking home eight Oscars in 1965, including Best Picture, Best Director for George Cukor, and Best Costume Design for Cecil Beaton. Stanley Holloway, who'd done the stage version as well, and supporting actress Gladys Cooper, who played Higgins' mum, were also nominated.

The musical is based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, wherein Professor Higgins and his friend Colonel Pickering make a wager that centers on whether Higgins can teach a Cockney flower seller to speak properly enough to pass as a lady at a posh garden party. In the musical version, that is transformed into the Ascot race course and an Embassy Ball, and on film, it's Ascot that spawned all the nifty black-and-white costumes that many stage productions still pick up.

As Henry Higgins schools Eliza on proper pronunciations ("The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain" and suchlike)  as well as dress and decorum, issues of identity, agency and what makes someone who they are arise. And different productions interpret the end and whether there is a possible Happily Ever After for Henry and Eliza differently. We'll have to wait to see what spin Lovell and Penrod and the rest of the cast put on My Fair Lady when it plays from July 31 to August 3 at IWU's Westbrook Auditorium.

Auditions Coming Up for SHREK and MY FAIR LADY

If you are of a musical bent, there are two sets of auditions coming up that may be calling (or singing) your name.

First up will be Community Players' auditions for Shrek the Musical on May 18, 19 and 20, from 6 to 9 pm each night. Shrek the Musical is the live, more musically inclined version of the first Shrek animated movie, telling the story of a sweet green ogre and the princess he falls in love with. In both versions, the ogre has a talking donkey sidekick, short enemies in high places, and a whole bunch of fractured fairytale folk to fill out his story. On Broadway, he also got a bunch of songs, with music by Jeanine Tesori and lyrics from playwright David Lindsay-Abaire, who also wrote the book. Songs include "Big Bright Beautiful World" and "Morning Person," as well as "I'm a Believer," borrowed from the movie.

Just as a bit of comparison, you will remember that Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz and Eddie Murphy were the voices of Shrek, Princess Fiona and Donkey for the film, while John Lithgow voiced evil Lord Farquaad. Brian d'Arcy James, Sutton Foster, Daniel Breaker and Christopher Sieber took those roles on Broadway, with the help of extensive costuming to make them look like their animated alter egos. Plus Sieber had to walk on his knees to get teeny tiny Lord Farquaad up and running. Everybody from that group except Breaker picked up a Tony nomination, but costume designer Tim Hatley was the lone winner.

Community Players will be looking for adult and child performers for its Shrek, with auditions for kids in grades 3 to 8 scheduled for 6 pm and auditions for adults (considered anything older than 9th grade) scheduled for 7 pm. The younger set will be asked to sing 16 bars and show off their dance skills, while adult auditions will consist of singing, dancing and reading from the script. For more information on Shrek the Musical auditions, click here or here.

At pretty much the opposite side of the musical spectrum, Prairie Fire Theatre will hold auditions for My Fair Lady, based on the George Bernard Shaw play Pygmalion, on May 28 and 29.

My Fair Lady is a Lerner and Loewe classic, featuring megahits like "I Could Have Danced All Night," "On the Street Where You Live," "With a Little Bit of Luck," and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face" as it tells the story of a lowly Covent Garden flower girl turned into a lady by an arrogant language expert. It ran for an astonishing 2717 performances on Broadway from 1956 to 1962 and picked up six Tony Awards, including Best Musical, Best Actor for Rex Harrison, Best Director for Moss Hart and Best Costume Designer for Cecil Beaton.

Oddly, neither Julie Andrews nor Stanley Holloway won for their standout performances as Cockney urchin Eliza Doolittle and her dad Alfred.

Harrison and Holloway were there when the movie was made in 1964, but Audrey Hepburn (dubbed by Marni Nixon) took over for Julie Andrews. The movie My Fair Lady walked off with eight Oscars, including Best Picture. Harrison was once again a winner, along with costume designer Cecil Beaton, but Hepburn and (once again) Holloway had to be happy to be nominated. When he won Best Actor, Rex Harrison dedicated the award to both Julie Andrews and Audrey Hepburn, his two "fair ladies."

Rhys Lovell, who took the reins of A Little Night Music for Prairie Fire last year, will direct My Fair Lady this time out. Lovell is looking for ten women and twelve men of all ages to play everything from Eliza and her dad to Henry Higgins' compatriot Colonel Pickering, Henry's long-suffering mother, and a variety of buskers, footmen and society folk who populate both the low and high worlds where Eliza finds herself.

The role of Henry Higgins has been precast -- Joe Penrod will play that single-minded task master -- but everything else is open. Auditioners are asked to prepare a short musical selection from any show they like. An accompanist will be provided.

Auditions will be held in Room 308 of Illinois Wesleyan's Presser Hall on Tuesday, May 27, and Wednesday, May 28, from 6 to 8 pm each night. Note that performances of Prairie Fire's My Fair Lady are scheduled to take place from July 31 to August 3 in IWU's Westbrook Auditiorium.

Got a Fever for Live Performance in February?

 I know it's hard to get used to the fact that it's 2013, but not only are we in a new year, we're now finished with January and dipping our toes in February. No, I'm not ready for Feb. But I'm trying to pretend I am, anyway!

Community Players' production of the operatically inclined farce Lend Me a Tenor finishes up its run this weekend. You have three performances left -- 7:30 pm tonight and tomorrow night or 2:30 pm on Sunday -- with tickets available here.

Red Devils, Debbie Horsfield's play about female football fans in Manchester, England, takes the stage inside the Melba J. Kirkpatrick Lab Theatre at IWU on February 4, 5 and 6, with all performances at 8 pm. Visiting Assistant Professor Christopher Connelly directs this gritty take on "working-class characters festering from a life on the dole, a life where soccer is the only activity to stir the imagination." That quote is from an LA Times review of the play from 1993.

Eureka College's production of Myth and Bricks, a one-act by Dustin Robert Blakeman, starts February 5, with performances through the 7th. Eureka College senior Jarrod Barth directs and stars in this look at a man, a brick and the relationship between the two.

In Bloomington, New Route Theatre opens Katori Hall's The Mountaintop on February 8, with Gregory D. Hicks starring as Martin Luther King, Jr. and Fania Bourn as the hotel maid he meets on the last day of his life, in a production directed by New Route Artistic Director Don Shandrow. The Mountaintop runs from February 8 to 24 at the theatre tucked inside the YWCA of McLean County. You can reserve tickets by emailing new.route.theatre@gmail.com or you can purchase them at the door on the night of performance. For more information, click here for the Facebook event page for The Mountaintop.

Grammy-Award winning a cappella group Sweet Honey in the Rock sings in celebration of the sesquicentennial of the Emancipation Proclamation at the Krannert Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana on February 9. This all-female vocal group shares "the legacy of African American music through jazz, hip hop, the blues, spirituals, rap, reggae, and gospel hymns." For the complete schedule of events devoted to that sesquicentennial celebration at the University of Illinois, click here.

Although Donald Margulies' Tony-nominated play Time Stands Still looks at love, marriage and commitment, it really isn't what you'd call romantic. Instead, photojournalist Sarah is wondering whether a safe, secure life with her longtime partner James can possibly mean as much as the time she's spent recording war and strife in the world's hot spots. Love? Career? Safety? Danger? Connection? Detachment? Which of these is the most important? Sandra Zielinski directs Time Stands Still for Heartland Theatre, with Cristen Susong as Sarah and David Krostal as James, in performance beginning February 14. Click here for ticket information and here for performance dates and times.

Illinois State University's spring theatre season begins February 21 with J.B., the allegorical verse play by Archibald MacLeish that tells the Biblical story of Job, but set in a circus. Yes, that's right. Job under the Big Top, with a balloon vendor and a popcorn guy standing in for God and the Devil. MFA director Matthew Scott Campbell is at the helm of this ISU production of J.B., with a cast that includes Tommy Malouf in the Job role, Andrew Rogalny, Jr., as the godly balloon man, and Matt Hallahan as the evil popcorn seller. J.B. runs through March 2 in ISU's Westhoff Theatre. Click here for event details.

As the battle between good and evil rages inside Westhoff, ISU's Center for the Performing Arts will host Oklahoma!, the Rodgers and Hammerstein cowboys vs. farmers musical with corn as high as an elephant's eye, a surrey with fringe on top, a girl who cain't say no, and all the attendant box lunches, square dances and souvenirs from Kansas City. Will Oklahoma become a state right before your eyes? Is there any doubt? For ISU, Richard Corley directs Christie Duffer and Robbie Holden as Laurey and Curley, the couple who might just be in love, in this Oklahoma! The show opens February 22 and closes March 2. To see a list of performance dates and ticket information, click here.
Oklahoma? OK!

Over in Urbana, the Station Theatre warms up with Stephen Karam's provocative Sons of the Prophet from February 21 to March 9. The play, which explores a hard-luck family who may be descended from Kahlil GIbran, author of The Prophet, was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize. Longtime Celebration Company member Gary Ambler will direct Sons of the Prophet in the Station's cozy confines.

Liz (left) and Ann Hampton Callaway

On the 22nd, the University of Illinois' Krannert Center for the Performing Arts hosts sisters Liz and Ann Hampton Callaway and Boom!, their musical revue for Baby Boomers and everyone else who enjoys the song stylings of Carole King, Stevie Wonder, the Beatles and Joni Mitchell. Click here for more information.

Illinois Wesleyan is offering a little Shakespeare to brighten your February days, with As You Like It, the romantic comedy set in the Forest of Arden, playing February 26-28 and March 1-3 at McPherson Theatre. Assistant Professor Thomas Quinn directs.

And closing out the month, the Opera Program Series from U of I's School of Music presents a semi-staged concert version of My Fair Lady, featuring all the music and the dialogue from the Lerner and Loewe musical. You can see this concert, featuring the work of Eduardo Diazmunoz, Artistic Director and Conductor (as well as chair of the Opera program at U of I), director Ricardo Herrera, and choreographer Rebecca Nettl-Fiol on February 28 and March 1, 2 and 3. For more information about this My Fair Lady, click here.