Four stars
Broadway Across America-Indianapolis;
Clowes Memorial Hall;
March 4-9

A glowing revival of an old chestnut, this production zips through the well-known story with fresh insights growing out of pop-up-book staging in partnership with actors who give dimension and depth to their characters. Lisa O’Hare is feisty in a way that allows you to accept her willingness to put up with the six-month wager between Christopher Casenove’s prickly Henry Higgins and Walter Charles’ laid-back Col. Pickering. Tim Jerome owns the stage as Alfred P. Doolittle while Justin Bohon prowls it as Freddy. Together with an outstanding company, this quintet surpasses familiarity to retain Lerner and Lowe’s romp as we remember it. Yet they expand, bend, slip under and float above the story and the lyrics so it’s a sparkling sense of reality and virtual reality — a slice of life where class structure defines but doesn’t diminish desire “to be” other than what birth and circumstance make us.