Director Rachel Kavanaugh has been at the helm of many Chichester shows, including Half a Sixpence and The Music Man. In a break from rehearsals for the West End transfer of Shadowlands, now open in the Aldwych Theatre, she looked ahead to our brand-new production of My Fair Lady, coming to the Festival Theatre from 6 July.

Welcome back, Rachel! What do you enjoy about working at Chichester?

It’s absolutely one of my favourite theatres. There’re lots of reasons for that but the most important is the special relationship between actors and audiences in that space. The challenge is that you can’t fly scenery, or have the traditional machinery and walls of a proscenium arch theatre. But I’ve always found that incredibly liberating; you have to find an alternative, possibly less literal theatrical expression.

And the audiences themselves are brilliant – loyal, theatre-literate, clever and supportive. It’s wonderful to work in a theatre that has an audience so invested in it.

You’ve directed many classic musicals; what attracted you to My Fair Lady?

It’s always been on the list of musicals I wanted to do. I was brought up on musical theatre and the old Hollywood films; so along with many of the others I’ve done – The Sound of Music, Oklahoma!, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, The Wizard of Oz – My Fair Lady was one of the films I watched again and again. It’s in my DNA. So when Justin asked me to do it, I said “Yes please!”

I’m also pretty excited to be, I think, the first woman to direct a major production of it, certainly in this country, and to look at the show – which is so much about the relationship between a particular woman and a particular man – through that lens.

My Fair Lady has been described as ‘the perfect musical’ – what makes it a perennial favourite?

Lots of things make it special. The most obvious is the book by George Bernard Shaw. The quality of the writing is as good as the quality of the music and lyrics, and that’s a really rare gift in a musical.

Do you have a favourite number you’re looking forward to staging?

So many! There’s a section towards the end of Act One where Higgins is getting really relentless in his teaching of Eliza, with a lot of interpolated snatches of music from the servants and Mrs Pearce, which turns into The Rain in Spain. And Higgins has two quite long songs alone in his study which unfold rather like a great soliloquy. Without giving too much away about the design, those scenes in Higgins’ study, and where Eliza finally manages to say her vowels in the way Higgins would like, can be theatrically expressed in a very exciting way.

What else can audiences look forward to?

I’m delighted to be working with designer Peter McKintosh and choreographer Stephen Mear. I haven’t worked with Stephen since The Music Man in 2008 which was the first musical I did at Chichester. He’s also been longing to do My Fair Lady. I’ve worked with Peter on Love Story in the Minerva as well as on Shadowlands, and he creates outstanding designs.

My Fair Lady has everything – elements the audience will hopefully go home having a good discussion about; humour; emotion; spectacle; and the most extraordinary score. To hear that music in the Festival Theatre is going to be very exciting – it will be a great night out.

Tickets for My Fair Lady are on sale now. Visit the show page to book your tickets and keep an eye out for behind-the-scenes content from the rehearsal room coming soon.