O'Hara, Grammer, Dennehy, Nixon Set for Philharmonic's My Fair Lady

Kelli O'Hara, Brian Dennehy, Kelsey Grammer, and Marni Nixon have been cast in leading roles in the New York Philharmonic's forthcoming semi-staged production of My Fair Lady. O'Hara will play Eliza Doolittle opposite Grammer's Henry Higgins. Dennehy plays Eliza's father, Alfred P. Doolittle, and Nixon, whose singing voice subbed for Audrey Hepburn in the 1964 film version of the Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe musical, will play Higgins' mother. Charles Kimbrough has been cast as Colonel Pickering, and Tim Jerome will play Professor Zoltan Karparthy. Conducted by Rob Fisher currently the musical director of The Apple Tree, the Philharmonic's My Fair Lady will have four performances, March 7-10, at Lincoln Center's Avery Fisher Hall.

My Fair Lady opened on Broadway on March 15, 1956. Adapted from George Bernard Shaw's 1912 play Pygmalion, the musical included songs such as "Wouldn't It Be Loverly," "With a Little Bit of Luck," "The Rain in Spain," "I Could Have Danced All Night" and "On the Street Where You Live." The show starred Rex Harrison as Henry Higgins, Julie Andrews as Eliza Doolittle and Stanley Holloway as Alfred P. Doolittle, and ran for 2,717 performances. The story, about a Cockney flower girl who is trained by a bachelor linguistics expert to speak proper English in six months' time as part of a bet with his friend Pickering, was also made into a 1964 film that starred Hepburn, Harrison and Holloway.

The New York Philharmonic's last semi-staged presentation of a Broadway musical was Leonard Bernstein's Candide in May 2004, starring Kristin Chenoweth and Patti LuPone. In 2000, the Philharmonic presented Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, starring LuPone, George Hearn and Audra McDonald. Perhaps its most famous Broadway concert event was the 1985 presentation of Sondheim's Follies with a cast that included Barbara Cook, Betty Comden & Adolph Green, George Hearn, Howard McGillin, Liliane Montevecchi, Mandy Patinkin and Elaine Stritch.

O'Hara will jump from one high-profile concert—the Reprise! presentation of Sunday in the Park With George in Los Angeles from January 30-February 11—to another, as she takes on the iconic role of Eliza Doolittle. She received a 2006 Best Actress Tony Award nomination for her performance opposite Harry Connick Jr. in The Pajama Game and a 2005 Best Featured Actress nomination for The Light in the Piazza. Other Broadway credits include Sweet Smell of Success, Dracula, Follies and Jekyll & Hyde. Off-Broadway and regional credits include My Life with Albertine, Beauty and Phantom.

Grammer, best known for playing Dr. Frasier Crane on Frasier and Cheers, most recently appeared on Broadway in the title role of Macbeth. Other Shakespearean credits include Othello, Richard II and Measure for Measure. His films include X-Men: The Last Stand and the forthcoming Even Money.

Dennehy won Tony Awards for his starring roles in Death of a Salesman and Long Day's Journey Into Night. Other notable stage credits include leading roles in Translations, Hughie, Trumbo, The Iceman Cometh, A Touch of the Poet and Galileo. His many films include Semi-Tough 10, Rambo: First Blood, Gorky Park, Never Cry Wolf, Twice in a Lifetime, Cocoon, Silverado, F/X, Legal Eagles, Best Seller, Presumed Innocent, Tommy Boy, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet and Peter Greenaway's The Belly of an Architect.

Nixon is best known as the singing voice for Deborah Kerr, Natalie Wood and Hapburn in films. Her vocal career has included opera, chamber and symphony, oratorio and Grammy nominated recordings. She made her Philharmonic debut in 1960 in Pierre Boulez's Improvisation on Mallarme No. 1, conducted by Leonard Bernstein.

Kimbrough, known to TV audiences for playing Jim Dial on Murphy Brown, was an origianl cast member of Sondheim's Company and also appeared on Broadway in Candide and Sunday in the Park With George. Other stage credits include A. R. Gurney's The Fourth Wall, The Dining Room, Later Life and Sylvia.

Jerome, currently featured as Professor Porter in Tarzan, has also appeared on Broadway in La Boheme, Me and My Girl, Beauty and the Beast, Man of La Mancha, The Rothschilds, Grand Hotel, Cats, The Magic Show and Lost in Yonkers.

The first performance of My Fair Lady will be a black-tie gala benefit on March 7. Thomas Z. Shepard is the producer. Additional casting will be announced later.