I’ve always been a nature over nurture sort of a person. I believe that people are more driven by their genetic code and less by their upbringing than most people want to admit.



That is not to say that we are completely predetermined to be successes or failures in life the moment baby batter reaches an egg. I’m just saying that successful people will likely succeed in any environment they find themselves and there are some people who can manage to find failure at every turn. Maybe it is karma or whatever. It just seems to be a trend.



Such is the notion behind the classic musical My Fair Lady, written by the duo of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, currently making a run of it at Encore’s outdoor stage in Gig Harbor.



The show not only includes the comically funny and clever lyrics found in the likes of “Get Me to the Church on Time,“ the charmingly romantic “Could Have Danced All Night” and the iconic “On the Street Where You Live,” the show is the full deal when it comes to music as well as storyline. It is based loosely on the ancient Greek tale of a sculptor named Pygmalion who creates a statue of a woman of such surpassing beauty that he falls in love with his own creation. It was sort of like the movie Mannequin although far less creepy. The story goes that the man loved this hunk of stone so much that Aphrodite brings the statue to life and gives her to the sculptor as his bride.



My Fair Lady takes that whole idea for a spin when phonetics professor and all-around English snoot Henry Higgins accepts a challenge to convert an otherwise ordinary street urchin and overall unrefined flower seller by the name of  Eliza Doolittle into someone who could pass for a lady of the ball after a month of lessons on proper diction.



Little does he know that he will fall in love with his creation and find himself at first challenging his own thoughts about the nature-versus-nurture argument only to later toss them all aside and embrace the woman he loves by the time the curtain is about to fall.



What makes this production especially fun is the open-air stage and casual surroundings, where children run free before the actors take their places and buckets of chicken become empty by intermission. With the age of drive-in movies long over, this is the next best thing for families to snuggle under blankets and enjoy a bit of theater.  

Shrek on stage

For something a bit different, there is always a trip to Seattle to see the world premiere of the Broadway-bound show Shrek: the Musical at the 5th Avenue Theatre. I’ll talk more about this show after I see it this weekend, but the show seems exactly what you would expect. It’s a show based on the story and characters from William Steig’s book Shrek!, which most folks will remember was turned into a series of movies. Imagine the movie with new music and an award-winning collection of actors and directors to bring it to life in a new way. That’s the hype around Shrek. The show runs through Sept. 21. Visit www.5thavenue.org or www.shrekthemusical.com for more information.



[Impact Church International, My Fair Lady, through Aug. 31, 7 p.m. Thursday-Sunday, $6-$15, 4819 Hunt St., Gig Harbor, 253.858.2282, www.encoretheater.org]