Melissa Errico stepped into the beloved musical My Fair Lady in the role of Eliza Doolittle when she was only 22-years old, starring in an important Broadway revival and following in the footsteps of some of the actresses she admires most, from Julie Andrews to Sally Ann Howe to Christine Andreas.

Directed by Britain’s foremost radical director, National Theatre’s legendary Howard Davies—best known worldwide for his definitive productions of tough American fare by Arthur Miller and Eugene O’Neill–the 1993 production sought to bring a muscular and searing sensibility to Lerner & Loewe, even returning the brutal and uneasy “bath scene” to the production and challenging the estate to reinvent the final scene of Act Two to be more in keeping with George Bernard Shaw’s original play.

Though a more conservative approach to the play was ultimately enforced by its producers—a subject Melissa, in recent years, has written about in one of her essay series in The New York Times—the production was still transformative for her career, with her opening night performance praised as “beguiling” in The New York Times the next morning.

Melissa later reprised her Broadway role to great acclaim at The Hollywood Bowl in a spectacular production with John Lithgow, Rosemary Harris, and Roger Daltrey. The role of Eliza also began her life-long engagement with the music of Lerner & Loewe, including several appearances as Guenevere in Camelot, while their music continues to fill her concert repertory, including an engagement with Michael Feinstein at Lincoln Center in “Lerner & Loewe Swings.”