In 2016, Dame Julie Andrews’ acclaimed recreation of the legendary 1956 Broadway production of My Fair Lady – in which she famously played Eliza Doolittle opposite Rex Harrison’s Henry Higgins – broke box office records at the Sydney Opera House, toured nationally and then made a triumphant return to Sydney.

Ten years on, the production – now celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Broadway premiere– is being revived by Opera Australia and John Frost under director Karen Johnson Mortimer.

Claire Lyon and Nathaniel Parker in My Fair Lady. Photo © Jeff Busby

Lerner & Loewe’s much-loved, acerbically witty musical is based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play Pygmalion about a professor of phonetics who bets he can make a Covent Garden flower seller, with a caterwauling cockney accent, pass as an aristocrat by teaching her to speak beautifully.

The old-fashioned but sumptuous staging suits the show, which clearly comes from another era but is so well written with such glorious songs that it still delights, despite some misogynistic content that might now raise eyebrows.

Oliver Smith’s original handsome sets have been recreated, with some of the backdrops reworked as architectural pieces...