Asolo Conservatory grad stars in national tour of ‘My Fair Lady’

The last time Sarasota area audiences saw Jonathan Grunert he was playing a suave dashing Scottish colonel in the Asolo Repertory Theatre production of “Murder on the Orient Express,” just before theaters shutdown because of the COVID pandemic.

The 2020 graduate of the FSU/Asolo Conservatory is returning to town as Professor Henry Higgins in the national tour of the 2018 Lincoln Center revival of the Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe classic musical “My Fair Lady.” The revival, which earned eight Tony Award nominations, runs Dec. 13-15 at the Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall.

Grunert plays a linguistics expert who bets his friend and colleague Col. Hugh Pickering that within six months, he can turn a poor Cockney flower girl into a more proper young woman who could get hired in a flower shop. The musical introduced such songs as “Wouldn’t it Be Loverly,” “The Rain in Spain’ and “I Could Have Danced All Night.”

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It’s Grunert’s first experience traveling the country. “I really have enjoyed seeing so much of the country. We’ve been in some beautiful theaters and I’m always trying to find something to do in every city, restaurants, museums,” he said in a Zoom interview from a tour stop in Fort Worth, Texas.

This production is directed by Bartlett Sher, who previously reinvented several classic musicals, including “South Pacific” and “The King and I,” bringing a contemporary sensibility to stories that might otherwise be considered sexist.

That’s certainly the case for “My Fair Lady,” based on George Bernard Shaw’s play “Pygmalion,” depicting a confirmed bachelor creating his perfect version of Eliza and unsure what to do with his unexpected feelings toward her.

Grunert said Sher went back to Shaw’s original play, and the screenplay he wrote for the 1938 film version that starred Wendy Hiller and Leslie Howard.

“The real focus has been on what Shaw was looking at, the relationships between classes, between men and women,” Grunert said. “I think we are all surprised how new the show sounds, how fresh the show seems, how something from 1912 can still speak to the day.”

Reviewing the revival, The New York Times wrote that Sher depicts two equal sparring partners in Eliza and Higgins.

The production “reveals the Eliza Doolittle as a hero instead of a puppet and reveals the musical, despite its provenance and male authorship, as an ur-text of the #MeToo moment.”

At the Conservatory, Grunert played Mercutio in a school tour of “Romeo & Juliet,”  and appeared in such shows as “Arcadia,” “Ghosts” and “Reckless.”

His Conservatory experience helped prepare him for his current role, particularly work on dialects, which is so key for Higgins.

“In my second year, I understudied in ‘Shakespeare in Love’ and my dialect in ‘Murder on the Orient Express’ was Scottish. A lot of work went into that and that translated immediately to Higgins, not only the ability to dialect, but to look at the character’s perspective on the world.”

Though he didn’t get a chance to sing much during his Conservatory years, his resume is filled with musical roles, though not quite the kind of singing he does as Higgins. The role was written for Rex Harrison,who famously talk-sung his songs on stage and the 1964 film.

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Grunert doesn’t get to sing full out the way Madeline Powell as Eliza and Cameron Loyal as her potential love interest Freddy Eynsford-Hill get to do. During the show, Grunert sings “An Ordinary Man,” “Why Can’t the English,” “Hymn to Him” and “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face.”

“Our Eliza can sing circles around anybody,” he says of Powell. “There’s only one song she sings while I’m on stage, ‘Without You,’ and I barely say a word, so I just get to stand there listening to this gorgeous voice. It feels like I’m getting a private concert.”

“My Fair Lady”

Music by Frederick Loewe, book and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner. Directed by Bartlett Sher, choreographed by Christopher Gattelli. Runs Dec. 13-15, Van Wezel Performing Arts Hall, 777 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. Tickets are $42-$97. 941-263-6799; vanwezel.org

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This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: ‘My Fair Lady’ tour stops in Sarasota with a new approach to a classic