THEATER : ‘Lady’s Men’ Focuses on Lerner, Loewe’s Stormy Relationship

Show business partnerships are sometimes stormy. That’s the price of blending volatile talents into an artistic whole. The team of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe was no exception, but their differing lifestyles, the sharp contrast in their personalities and professional integrity didn’t keep them from creating some of the century’s most memorable musical theater scores.

This dichotomy is at the core of William Graham’s one-man show about the duo, “Lerner & Loewe: My Fair Lady’s Men,” playing Friday at the Norris Theatre in Rolling Hills Estates, and Saturday at Brea’s Curtis Theatre.

“For people who know anything at all about them, it certainly is no secret that they were not compatible individuals,” said Graham, remembered for his previous show, “Cole Porter: One of a Kind.”

“As Fritz Loewe says in the show, the papers make them out to be happy brothers, but that was not true. He says sometimes it’s like being tied to the devil himself to work with Alan.”

Lerner was inclined to shirk his duty in turning out lyrics for Loewe to set to music, particularly in his later years when he was under the influence of “Dr. Feel Good,” an infamous New York doctor who treated his patients with heavy doses of drugs.

Loewe, known to friends as a happy-go-lucky type, often found himself forced to reveal a less cheerful personality in his dealings with his partner.

Graham didn’t want his “Lerner & Loewe” to be another “and then I wrote . . .” kind of a show. He wanted to go beyond his subjects’ professional lives and show what made them the richly endowed creators they were. His detailed research into their personal peccadilloes, he feels, give the show depth and shading beyond the surface enjoyment of their music.

It also gives Graham more opportunities as an actor and playwright.

“I try to think of myself as three different artists,” he says. “I’m an actor. I’m a pianist. And I’m a singer. In this show it works out pretty well, because Fritz Loewe was a concert pianist, so this gives me a chance to try and play a piano well. In the second act I become primarily a singer. This gives me a chance to sing the songs and dwell upon the lyrics.”

Playing both roles is challenging, he says, “how to come back after intermission and become a completely different figure, so people don’t say, ‘Hey, there’s that guy we just saw, with a wig.’ ”

T.H. McCulloh writes regularly about theater for The Times. * “Lerner & Loewe: My Fair Lady’s Men,” Norris Theatre, 27570 Crossfield Drive, Rolling Hills Estates; 8 p.m. Friday; $22 (310) 544-0403. Curtis Theatre, Brea Civic and Cultural Center, Brea; 2 & 8 p.m. Saturday; $12-$15. (714) 990-7722.