'My Fair Lady' stepping lively for a major tour

NEW YORK — On a quiet Labor Day weekend in a sunlit, fourth-floor rehearsal studio just off of Times Square, the "Ascot Gavotte" is about to begin.

"As we rehearsed it, ladies and gentlemen," says associate director Shaun Kerrison. A casually clad group of performers, many wearing blue jeans and sneakers, strike the formal, upper-crust poses of proper Edwardian society as rehearsal pianist Laura Bergquist plunks out a familiar melody.

Now more than a half-century old, "My Fair Lady," one of the most beloved celebrations of musical theater, is getting ready to go out on the road again. The Alan Jay Lerner-Frederick Loewe musical, starring Christopher Cazenove as Henry Higgins and Lisa O'Hare as Eliza Doolittle, will be one of the major touring shows of the 2007-2008 theater season, running into next June.

The production, directed by Trevor Nunn and choreographed by Matthew Bourne, is under the auspices of, among others, producer Cameron Mackintosh, a man who has had a long love affair with the musical.

"I was lucky enough to be taken by my aunt to see Rex (Harrison) and Julie (Andrews)," says Mackintosh, recalling when the show's original Broadway stars opened "My Fair Lady" in London. "I saw it three times during its long London run."

He even wrangled an invite to the show's closing-night party.

"I had the most wonderful time on that last night. I was a very precocious 16-year-old at the time and I remember thinking, 'This is the most wonderful musical, but this (replacement) cast isn't really as good as when I saw it on previous occasions.'

"I must say it is part of what has driven me throughout my career: to make sure that a show is as good — if not better — than it was when it opened. To keep the standard up. In those days, they didn't because long runs were few and far between."

As the producer of such marathon musicals as "Cats," "The Phantom of the Opera," "Les Miserables" and "Miss Saigon," Mackintosh knows a little something about long runs.

The man meticulously casts and watches over his shows. He first produced "My Fair Lady" in the late 1970s, a British touring company that eventually came to London and ran for more than two years.

And Mackintosh says that care went into his latest version, which is based on the 2001 National Theatre production, starring Jonathan Pryce and Martine McCutcheon, that he later moved to the West End's Drury Lane Theatre.