Broadway favorite Julie Benko (Funny Girl, Harmony) will star as Eliza Doolittle in a one-night-only concert performance of Lerner and Loewe's My Fair Lady at Colorado's Theatre Aspen July 15. The performance will be held in the Michael Klein Music Tent, with further casting to be announced.
Maggie Burrows will direct the concert, with Andy Einhorn conducting the Aspen Music Festival Orchestra.
The upcoming concert is the company's latest in a series of theatrical presentations, which has previously presented Fiddler on the Roof, Master Class, The Sound of Music, South Pacific, and a revue of songs by Richard Rodgers.
Benko skyrocketed to fame as the standby Fanny Brice in the recent Broadway revival of Funny Girl, and created the role of Ruth in last season's Harmony. She has also appeared on Broadway in Fiddler on the Roof and Les Mis茅rables, and has released three albums: Introducing Julie Benko, Hand in Hand, and Christmas With You.
Based on George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, My Fair Lady follows a British phonetician who bets a friend that he can make a Cockney flower girl pass as a fine lady to their society friends through linguistic work, grooming, and etiquette lessons. The work premiered on Broadway in 1956, starring Rex Harrison and making a star of a then-20-year-old Julie Andrews. The classic score introduced such Lerner and Loewe favorites as "I Could Have Danced All Night," "Wouldn't It Be Loverly?," "On the Street Where You Live," "Get Me to the Church on Time," and "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face." The work has become a classic of the musical theatre canon, getting a Best Picture Oscar-winning film adaptation starring Harrison and Audrey Hepburn in 1964, and Broadway revivals in 1976, 1981, 1993, and 2018.
The upcoming Colorado concert is a collaboration between Theatre Aspen and The Aspen Music Festival and School. The performance is being presented through special arrangement with .
Tickets are at .
