A winning Eliza spreads her wings in 'My Fair Lady'

Has any musical comedy held up better across the decades than "My Fair Lady"?

Not many, you will be reminded, if you revisit this eloquently witty, rhapsodically melodic Lerner and Loewe classic, which turns G.B. Shaw's dexterous social comedy "Pygmalion" into a classy Broadway tuner.

Revisit "My Fair Lady" you can, and very well may want to, in a new production at the 5th Avenue Theatre that's notable for its winning Eliza Doolittle (Broadway veteran Judy Blazer) and many fine Seattle players.

Let's start with Blazer, who has portrayed the feisty Covent Garden flower girl and would-be lady Eliza on several previous occasions in other cities.

Not to worry: This gamine actress and most pleasing singer does not phone the role in. There's a sense of naturalness and spontaneity in Blazer's quick-tempered Cockney outbursts at her snotty "benefactor" and makeover coach Henry Higgins (David Pichette). And she radiates girlish delight when soaring through "I Could Have Danced All Night."

There's not much of a romantic spark between her and Pichette, but Shaw (who hated the idea of Eliza and Higgins winding up together, as they do in the musical) would probably approve.

What's at least as important is the feeling of begrudging affection that gradually bonds the two. And Pichette's ability to project the racing intellect and irascible impatience of a pedant who is quite content going solo — until a tough, lovable "guttersnipe" crashes his complacency.

Pichette isn't a singer, and he croons about one in five lines of the fiendishly clever odes "Why Can't the English" and "I'm An Ordinary Man." But singing is less a requirement of this part (tailored for Rex Harrison) than articulating the words and witticisms in the priceless Shavian dialogue and Loewe lyrics. And that Pichette does well.

A delicious surprise is Laurence Ballard's song-and-dance turn as Eliza's rascal of a dad,

Alfred P. Doolittle. Ballard (known primarily as a dramatic actor)

sings sturdily, and looks to be having a blast celebrating Doolittle's roguishness with a merry jig in "With a Little Bit Of Luck," and a vivacious pre-wedding bender in "Get Me to the Church on Time."

Seán G. Griffin gives Higgins' gentlemanly pal Col. Pickering a merry lilt. And Lori Larsen works her magical comic timing and wry grand dame airs as Higgins' unflappable mother.

The show isn't as inventive as the "My Fair Lady" mounted at Village Theatre a few years ago. But David Bennett's straightforward staging is chipper and amiable (and aptly haughty in the Ascot Gavotte number), and it is garnished with Casey Nicholaw's simple, lively dances and Gregory Poplyk's attractive period costumes.

For all that's enjoyable, there were some jarring technical glitches in the matinee I attended.

One of Michael Anania's sets (Higgins' study, which looks incongruously like a Swiss chalet) caused an awful racket when moving in and out.

And oh, those pesky miking problems — the chief victim here being talented Louis Hobson, whose robust rendition of "On the Street Where You Live" was marred by excess electronic boosting.

Bothersome too was the periodic failure of conductor Joel Fram and the actor-singers to agree on a tempo. Briskness can be a virtue in musical theater, but Fram seemed to rush everything — from the overture on.

Such things can be remedied, and shouldn't keep you away. This "My Fair Lady" may not be perfection, but it is loverly.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com