Quaker Valley High School to go bigger than ever with classic musical ‘My Fair Lady’
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After last year’s very contemporary “The Addams Family,” Quaker Valley High School’s 2025 spring musical is going even bigger with a classic. From March 5-8, the school will produce “My Fairy Lady,” a surprisingly rare choice for high schools, according to director Austin Wolford.
“It’s a very big show, but we had quite the cast for it and thought it was sort of a once-in-a-career time to do a show like ‘My Fair Lady,’ so we went for it. We’re really excited to do such a classic. It’s a show that everybody kind of knows and adores, especially with the movie,” Wolford said.
The film version — starring Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison — was adapted from the Lerner and Loewe stage musical, which itself was adapted from the play “Pygmalion” by George Bernard Shaw. The stage musical was the 1956 Tony Award winner for Best Musical, which it won, along with five other Tonys.
“My Fair Lady” brings together Eliza Doolittle, a lower-class Cockney-accented flower girl, and Henry Higgins, a dialectician, in Edwardian London.
“This whole story, it’s a story of classes — Higgins is from the upper class, Eliza is from the lower class, and Higgins takes her and he believes by changing how she talks and how she dresses, she can become a member of that upper class society. Along the way, Eliza realizes that she kind of loses herself in the process,” Wolford said.
But those who have only seen the Hepburn and Harrison film may be in for a surprise.
“Without spoiling the ending of our show, we are taking inspiration from the original play ‘Pygmalion,’ which is slightly different from the movie ending. If people are used to the movie and how that movie ends, come check out our show and see how it’s slightly different,” he said.
While this show contains familiar songs such as “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “The Rain in Spain” and “On The Street Where You Live,” audiences may most enjoy the sweeping scenic design and the impressive acting work by the student cast.
“One of the big challenges with ‘My Fair Lady’ is the scenic design,” Wolford said. “You’re in a handful of locations, but the main location of the show is in the study of Henry Higgins. And what we always try and do is, we try to make everything bigger and better than the year before, we try to keep progressing with the program and look at things every year and try to make it better. This year with our set, we are actually going bigger than we did last year, and last year was pretty massive to begin with.”
In fact, they’ve built Higgins’ entire two-story study, in conjunction with high school teacher Michael Santucci’s construction classes. The study even has a balcony, multiple doors and two portals that serve as windows.
“When people come see our show, we want them to feel the massive scale of the Higgins study. We want them to sit in the audience and be looking and think, ‘Oh my, we’re sitting inside of an Edwardian brownstone house in the 1910s.’ I think we have accomplished that,” Wolford said.
And, of course, a big part of the plot of “My Fair Lady” involves accents, which means that the cast had to work hard on their diction. Lucky for them, their assistant director — also Wolford’s wife — is Carlie Keffer, a speech pathologist.
“She is our dialect coach for the whole show. She did a whole presentation on all of the accents that are needed, and she’s been our go-to person that all of the students have gotten to work with on their specific dialects, how to sing with the different dialects and still be understood,” Wolford said.
So is this year’s crop of theater-loving students up to the challenge? No doubt about it, Wolford assured.
“This year, we really, really need strong performers to pull off these characters, and our cast is absolutely crushing it. They are becoming these characters, they’re having more time to go more in-depth for the motivations behind the characters, which has been a really rewarding process, especially for our upperclassmen.”
Even with a less dance-heavy show than last year’s “The Addams Family,” Wolford gave a shout-out to choreographers Michael Greer and Mara Greer, whose work especially shines in second act number “Get Me To The Church On Time.”
Jack Miller and Charlotte Liao are the two leads.
“The two of them play off of each other beautifully, and they really understood the assignment,” Wolford said.
Miller, an 18-year-old senior, is taking on the role of Henry Higgins. He’s been a lifelong theater lover who got started in performing arts as a preschooler.
“I hadn’t seen ‘My Fair Lady’ prior to the show being picked, so it was an interesting opportunity to approach the character blind. I read ‘Pygmalion’ just to get a sense of the show before I auditioned, but I wanted to stay away from seeing too many people do it,” he said.
Miller said Wolford gave him some starting-off points and tips, and he’s spent rehearsals fine-tuning the balance of the character. “It’s been a lot of fun exploring that and my co-star, Charlotte, is the best.”
“I think the community is why I keep coming back to it. You get to make so many new friends and meet so many people that you click with,” he said.
Miller describes Higgins as spending the show figuring out how to break down his protective shell and learn to be vulnerable again.
“It’s an interesting dynamic to play with,” he said.
Liao, 17, a junior and this show’s Eliza Doolittle, has been doing musical theater since she was 7 or 8 years old.
“I love ‘My Fair Lady,’ and I was really excited to find out we were going to do it,” she said.
“The accent work has definitely been a lot of fun to work on, especially switching between the proper accent and the Cockney accent,” Liao said.
She said she practices by listening to recordings of people speaking in different accents and saying her lines in the accents over and over again.
Now that the rehearsals are longer and off-book, she’s been enjoying pulling the show together with the cast and crew.
“It’s really a great group of people,” she said.
“My Fair Lady” will be performed at Quaker Valley High School with performances running from March 5-8. To learn more and get tickets, visit qvsd.org.