The biggest star in Lincoln Center’s upcoming revival of “My Fair Lady” isn’t playing Eliza Doolittle or Henry Higgins: She’s playing Mrs. Higgins, Henry’s elegant mother.
Diana Rigg will return to the New York stage for the first time in 24 years in a role seldom associated with an actress of her stature.
Her fan base ranges from 18 to 80. If you’re 50 and up (and male), I bet you can still see her in a leather catsuit as Emma Peel in “The Avengers.” For my money, she was also the best Bond babe ever: Tracy Draco in “On Her Majesty’s Secret Service,” the only woman to lure 007 to the altar. (Alas, she died soon after.)
These days, the 79-year-old has millions of younger fans from her turn as Olenna Tyrell in HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” for which she’s garnered three Emmy nominations.
It was a coup for Lincoln Center to get her, but in true Olenna fashion, it’s a coup she orchestrated.
A couple of years ago, her agent rang up André Bishop, the head of Lincoln Center Theater, and told him Rigg was in town. Bishop met her for tea at the Surrey Hotel (where better to meet Dame Diana?) and fell under her spell.
“We had a great time,” Bishop says. “She told me she wanted to come to Lincoln Center and be in something. At the time, I wasn’t sure what, but when we decided on ‘My Fair Lady,’ she seemed an obvious and delightful choice for Mrs. Higgins.”
She played the part before, in a 2011 London production of “Pygmalion,” the play on which “My Fair Lady” is based.
The next step was to charm Bartlett Sher, who’s directing “My Fair Lady.” They met at London’s Savoy Hotel for Champagne, and Sher offered her the job on the spot.
Rigg last appeared on Broadway in 1994, as the title character in a crackling production of “Medea.” She was sensational, winning the Tony for Best Actress in a Play, the same year Queen Elizabeth II made her a Dame for services rendered to the British Empire in Chelsea boots.
Joining Rigg in “My Fair Lady” will be Lauren Ambrose as Eliza, Harry Hadden-Paton as Higgins and Norbert Leo Butz as Alfred P. Doolittle.
Ambrose (“Six Feet Under”) has been on Broadway twice before — she was in Lincoln Center Theater’s “Awake and Sing!” — but never in a musical. She’ll work with go-to Broadway vocal coach Joan Lader to prepare for “My Fair Lady.”
It’s no secret that Hadden-Paton wasn’t the first choice for Higgins. Lincoln Center held out for Colin Firth, but he didn’t want to leave his family in England. Ralph Fiennes was briefly in the mix, as was Anthony Andrews. But Sher wanted a young Higgins, and Hadden-Paton, Lady Edith’s Bertie from “Downton Abbey,” fit the bill — though, at 36, he’s three years younger than Ambrose. Higgins is usually much older than Eliza. Rex Harrison was 48 when he created the role; Julie Andrews, the original Eliza, was 20.
There was plenty of grumbling on Twitter (“twumbling”?) about the release this week of the first batch of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” tickets. To keep scalpers from snapping up everything in sight, buyers were issued “fan codes.” But demand was so intense, not everybody with a code could get a ticket.
The $40 tickets were gone in minutes, so those who weren’t first on line had to steady themselves to pay $200 and up.
Still, tickets were sold out within three hours. A new batch will be released soon, and producers are working out some of the technical glitches that bedeviled the site.
The scalpers did snag some seats. They always do. Last time I checked, a few tickets were available on StubHub for $2,000 a piece.
’Twas ever thus.
