Word: chamberlaine
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Before the revisionist My Fair Lady opened on Broadway, Richard Chamberlain went on the warpath, trying to get his co-star sacked in favor of her understudy. Without having seen the understudy -- but having endured Melissa Errico's hapless Eliza Doolittle -- one can be sure Chamberlain was right about her. Rarely has a plum Broadway role been so ineptly handled. While Errico sings gloriously if unimaginatively, she is an unconvincing Cockney whose linguistic foibles wobble from syllable to syllable, quite a handicap in a show about the social importance of accents. She is plausible only in two feminist-flavored moments...
...version also saddled with Julian Holloway's cutesy capering as Eliza's debauched father, Dolores Sutton's vamping as Higgins' mother and sets that make the Covent Garden flower market look like a Florida condo in mid- construction and render Higgins' study fit for a Vincent Price horror flick, Chamberlain shows calculated charm and wit. He sings better than Rex Harrison and looks terrific. His best scenes are with the normally bland Pickering, whom Paxton Whitehead makes droll...
...rivalries still exist. The problem is the players aren't as good--so who really cares. Acie Earl squaring off against Vlade Divac doesn't conjure up images of Parish against Kareem, or Russell against Chamberlain in the twilight of their careers...
...about to get another, if less egregious. My Fair Lady, starring TV miniseries idol Richard Chamberlain, opens in early December after just over seven lucrative months on the road, topping $1 million at the box office in one week and coming close to it in another. That has been rewarding for Chamberlain: his deal is 10% of the gross. About the show itself, he is less enthusiastic. He is delighted with the role and the approach of English director Howard Davies. "On the physical side," Chamberlain says, however, "the producers, Fran and Barry Weissler, have treated it like summer stock...
Broadway's abuzz with openings, three last week and 11 more this year, including The Kentucky Cycle, part two of Angels in America, a new Neil Simon and revivals starring Richard Chamberlain, Sam Waterston and Brian Bedford. What's missing? New musicals. Only three are set through spring, each rehashing an old story...