by Kevin McLaughlin
Ohio Light Opera’s production of Lerner and Loewe’s My Fair Lady seems tailor-made for the company’s knack for giving familiar repertory fresh legs.
Half Edwardian social experiment, half hit parade, Jacob Allen’s staging treats its manners and melodies as pleasures rather than relics, while keeping the show’s questions about social class, gender stereotypes, and women’s independence unresolved. The show runs in rep through August 2 at The College of Wooster’s Freedlander Theatre. I saw the performance on June 17.
The plot, based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, remains familiar. Phonetics professor Henry Higgins wagers with a colleague that he can take Eliza Doolittle, a Covent Garden flower seller whose accent he finds intolerable and whose intelligence he badly underestimates, and pass her off as a duchess. Through drills, bullying, coaxing, and one miraculous breakthrough involving ‘The Rain in Spain,’ he succeeds. The trouble is that Eliza turns out not to be clay in Higgins’s hands, but a person with an acute self-awareness.
The songs arrive like a procession of old friends: “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly,” “With a Little Bit of Luck,” “I Could Have Danced All Night,” “On the Street Where You Live,” “Get Me to the Church on Time,” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.” A lesser musical would be grateful for even one of these.
The excellent singing and acting matched the quality of the songs and libretto. Rachel Wienfeld gave an endearing performance as Eliza Doolittle. The attractive qualities of her voice and embodiment of her character came through even in her Cockney phase.
Thomas Valenti was an assured, charismatic Henry Higgins. He was utterly convincing as an entitled and clueless boor for most of the show, yet he made his case — that Eliza had received as much from him as he had from her — seem almost persuasive. His Rex Harrison-style parlando — singing without quite singing — was pitch-perfect.
In the penultimate scene, while listening to Eliza’s recorded voice on the Dictaphone and on the verge of sobs, Valenti captured Higgins’ genuine emotional need for her, a crucial ingredient largely missing until then.
Jonathan Trimble was a standout, bringing sweetness and assurance to both his singing and acting as Freddy, the younger upper-middle class man who becomes smitten with Eliza. As Eliza’s father Alfred P. Doolittle, Niko Theriault brought a jolt of energy to every appearance. A singer he is not, and sometimes he spoke too fast, but his humor and animation gave each scene an undeniable lift.
The staging cast Spencer Reese with a faintly smarmy edge as Higgins’ fellow linguist Colonal Pickering. Reese, doing double duty as choreographer, deserves special mention, particularly for the exuberant “Get Me to the Church on Time” number.
Adroitly paced by Michael Borowitz, the OLO orchestra brought clarity, cohesion, and freshness to Loewe’s infectious score. Carly Holzwarth’s costumes, Brittany Shemuga’s lighting, and Daniel Hobbs’s sets gave the production a handsome, readable period frame.
A present-day My Fair Lady, like OLO’s, must hold together the wit, spectacle, Cockney fun, and sweep of Loewe’s score, along with the uneasy relationship between Eliza and Higgins.
The difficulty of My Fair Lady is also its fascination. We love the music, the comedy, Eliza’s impossible transformation, the ball gowns, the verbal fencing, and the ache of two people who understand each other too well and not well enough. Ohio Light Opera’s production lets us enjoy the show without pretending its social questions have disappeared.
Photos by Ben Small
Published on ClevelandClassical.com June 25, 2026
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