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Retro RFH Tower Players’ ‘My Fair Lady’ ’80s Play Time

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RFH’s “My Fair Lady”
Photo/Facebook screenshot

The RFH Tower Players have played hard, as usual, and the troupe opened its spring musical Evil Dead on Friday night. The spring musical at the high school is long standing tradition — and one that has come with much accolades for fine artistic work.

It is the 70th anniversary of My Fair Lady’s Broadway debut in 1956. So, we are taking you back to RFH’s production of the Lerner and Lowe classic in the early ’80s.

The RFH directors, choreographers, costumers and all advisors behind the scenes have changed with time and other factors, but high quality has been consistent and something for which RFH’s shows have been renowned.

Many of the student actors involved have also gone on to work professionally in the field or continued throughout their lives in some sort of community theater capacity.

The productions used to be staged for three days — Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Then, in more recent years, the shows opened on a Friday and close with a Sunday matinee. Now, the spring musical plays for two weekends with matinees: Friday, Saturday nights and Sunday matinee for the first weekend; and Saturday night and Sunday matinee for the closing weekend. But who can keep up? All that matters is no matter the schedule, the show continues to go on at RFH.

Many of the faces in the RFH shows are still familiar ones, as the talent has run in families over the decades.

The double-dose Retro Pic(s) of the Day offers a glimpse back to an RFH production of My Fair Lady, starring one very familiar girl from the Rumson Hughes family known to have a stellar singing voice. She is the aunt of a couple of past Tarzan Hugheses, now in college, who have been seen on the RFH stage many times.

She was also this founding editor’s daughter in Fiddler on the Roof and the family has always been, and remains, friends. Tradition! And, oh, there are many other familiar faces in these photos. One was the Artful Dodger in Oliver back in the 1970s and a mime of the fleetingly popular RFH Mime Troupe. A Hughes was in that, too. Another could be seen in one of our retro Hunt photos.

There were many traditions that came with the production of RFH shows that have since ceased. Know what they are? Recognize anyone in these pics? Your RFH spring musical of all time?