Left to right:

`My Fair Lady"• Cynthia Dale as Eliza
Doolittle and Stra t ford Festival Artistic
Director Richard Monette as Henry Higgins
(Sept. 18-Nov. 18). Colin Fere plays
Higgins May 4-July 13, and Geraint Wyn
Davies takes the role July 14-Sept. 14.

"King Lear"• Christopher Plummer
plays the lead role.

"The Threepenny Opera"• Tom McCamus
as Macheath — or as he's known to
Bobby Darin fans, 'Mack the Knife."

"The Scarlet Pimpernel," a first-time
production for Stra t ford, features
Sheila McCarthy as Marguerite and
Peter Donaldson as Sir Percy Blakeney.

Reign of Terror": Tom McCamus as
Richard III.

Lerner and Samuel Lerner, owner of a
successful chain of women's clothing
stores known as the Lerner Shops.
Although the lyricist and his two broth-
ers were Jewish by birth, religion did not
play a significant role in their lives.
Lerner attended Choate School and
Harvard University with John F.
Kennedy, graduating in the same col-
lege class of 1940.
Soon after, Lerner married the first
of his eight wives and moved back to
New York to write for the theater. He
also wrote radio scripts and books for
revues at the Lamb's Club, a theatrical
institution where one night in 1942,
during a bridge game, he met the
composer Frederick Loewe.
Lerner was 24; Loewe was 38. The col-
laboration was one of the most successful
partnerships in musical theater history.

Frederick Loewe (1901-1988) was
born in Berlin, Germany, the son of
an opera singer, Edmund Loewe, and
an actress, Rosa Loewe, both of whom
were Austrian.
There is some indication that Loewe
was half-Jewish. According to one pub-
lished observation from a lifelong
friend, Loewe was brutalized by the
German children at the military acade-
my he attended as a young boy, treated
as an outcast for his Jewish heritage.
Loewe moved to the United States in
1924, where he worked at a variety of
occupations before beginning to make
a living playing piano and organ.
In 1952, Lerner and Loewe
embarked on the ambitious idea of
trying to musicalize Pygmalion, George

STRATFORD on page 74

"'*".71. W:7V•17;:,

C

E

Seventeen productions at four venues
comprise Straffbrd season.

FESTIVAL THEATRE

My Fair Lady, Lerner and
Loewe's musical about a misogy-
nistic linguist and a Cockney
flower girl, runs May 28-Nov. 10;
previews start. May 4.
King Lear, Shakespeare's time-
less tale of foolish fathers and
ungrateful children, stars
Christopher Plummer in the title
role, and runs Aug. 24-Nov. 3;
previews start Aug. 20.
All's Well That Ends Well,
Shakespeare's romantic comedy in
which the "girl gets boy" theme
predates feminism by four cen-
turies,
runs May 27-Aug. 31; pre-
.
yiews start May 9.
and Juliet, Shakespeare's

ng

ring
runs May
start May 16.

Terrwr,

a espeares b too -soaked
tragedy about England's most
murderous king, runs July 13-
Nov. 3; previews start June 18.

TOM PATTERSON TIMATRE

Henry VI: Revenge in France and
Henry VI: Revolt in England are
Shakespeare's three Henry VI plays
consolidated into two parts, and
portray the reign of King Henry VI
of England against a backdrop of
civil unrest and war with France.
They run June 1-Sept. 28; previews
start May 17-18.
The Two Noble Kinsmen, a late
work by Shakespeare and John

Fletcher, in which two friends
turn into arch-rivals over the same
woman, runs July 12-Sept 29;
previews start July 9.

The Lunatic, The Lover, and
the Poet, acclaimed actor Brian
Bedford's one-man show about
the world's greatest dramatist,
William Shakespeare, runs Aug.
6-30; eight performances only.

STUDIO THEATRE

One-act plays High-Gravel-
Blind, by Paul Dunn, about the
best-laid plans of a young man
waylaid by his long-lost father;
and Eternal Hydra, by Anton
Piatigorsky, about three literary
figures vying for control over a
writer's legacy, run July 13-Aug.
10, previews start July 10.
One-act plays Bereav'd of Light,
by Ian Ross, exploring 18th-cen-
tury history and the interaction
between North America's
Aboriginal and African-Canadian
communities; and The Fellini
dio Plays, a comedy adapted
m the early radio plays of
amed Italian filmmaker Federico
Fellini, run Aug 6-25; previews
start July 28.
One-act plays Walk Right Up,
by Celia McBride about aging
parents and their children torn
between a sense of duty and living
their own lives; and Shadows, by
Timothy Findley, about guests at
a dinner party and a lunar eclipse
which changes everything, run
Aug 24-Sept. 15; previews start
Aug. 17.
The Swanne: George III (The
Death of Cupid), by Peter
Hinton, the first segment of a
projected three-part epic romance
based on Victoria, Queen desig-
nate, who writes a fiction about
the society she will soon rule,
runs Oct. 9-Nov. 2; previews start
Oct. 1.

5/3
2002

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