Grammer, O’Hara, and Dennehy to Star in N.Y. Philharmonic’s My Fair Lady

Kelsey Grammer, Kelli O’Hara, and Brian Dennehy will respectively play the roles of Henry Higgins, Eliza Doolittle, and Alfred P. Doolittle in the New York Philharmonic’s staged concert performances of the classic Alan Jay Lerner-Frederick Loewe musical My Fair Lady, scheduled for March 7-10 at Avery Fisher Hall.

Also featured in the cast will be Charles Kimbrough as Colonel Pickering, Marni Nixon as Mrs. Higgins, and Tim Jerome as Zoltan Karpathy. Rob Fisher will conduct the concerts, and Thomas Z. Shepard will produce. The director and further casting will be announced shortly.

My Fair Lady is based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion. The original Broadway production of the musical starred Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews, and Stanley Holloway; it opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on March 15, 1956 and ran for 2,717 performances. The show has had three Broadway revivals, in 1976, 1981, and 1993. In the 1964 film version, Harrison and Holloway recreated their Broadway roles; Audrey Hepburn played Eliza, but her singing voice was dubbed by Marni Nixon. The film won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

Grammer is best known for playing Dr. Frasier Crane on TV’s Frasier and, previously, on Cheers. His New York stage credits include Macbeth, Othello, Sunday in the Park With George, A Month in the Country, and Quartermaine’s Terms. In 1999, he starred in the L.A. Reprise! production of Sweeney Todd. O’Hara received back-to-back Tony Award nominations in 2005 and 2006 for her work in The Light in the Piazza and The Pajama Game. She has also appeared on Broadway in Jekyll & Hyde, Follies (2001 revival), Sweet Smell of Success, and Dracula, the Musical. Dennehy is a two-time Tony winner for his performances in Death of a Salesman and Long Day’s Journey Into Night. He will play the role of Matthew Harrison Brady in the upcoming Broadway revival of Inherit the Wind. Among his many film and TV credits are Welcome to Paradise, She Hate Me, Romeo + Juliet, F/X, Silverado, Cocoon, The West Wing, and Just Shoot Me.

Nixon is best known for having provided the singing voices of Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood, and Audrey Hepburn in (respectively) the film versions of The King and I, West Side Story, and My Fair Lady; her New York stage credits include Nine (2003 revival), Follies (2001 revival), James Joyce’s The Dead, Opal, Taking My Turn, and The Girl in Pink Tights. Kimbrough was a Tony nominee for his performance as Harry in the original Broadway production of Company and an Emmy Award nominee for his role of anchorman Jim Dial on the long-running sitcom Murphy Brown. Jerome’s Broadway credits include La Bohème (directed by Baz Luhrmann), Me and My Girl, Beauty and the Beast, Man of La Mancha, The Rothschilds, Grand Hotel, and Cats.

Fisher was for many years the resident music director/conductor of the City Center Encores! series of musicals in concert; that series yielded the Broadway revivals of Chicago and Wonderful Town, which Fisher also helmed. Shepard is best known as a producer of Broadway cast albums; he also produced the New York Philharmonic’s 1985 concert presentation of Follies and the RCA recording of that concert.