By Joseph Knoop
Actors Theatre of Indiana is gearing up for their upcoming production of
My Fair Lady. The show kicks off the ATI’s 10th anniversary season of Broadway In Your Backyard .
Cynthia Collins, Co-founder and Assistant Artistic Director of Actors Theatre of Indiana, plays the role of “Mrs. Pearce” and “Mrs. Eynsford-Hill.”
“It’s possibly, in my opinion, the perfect musical,” Collins said.
My Fair Lady tells the story Eliza Doolittle, a Cockney flower girl taking lessons from phoneticist Henry Higgins in order to appear sophisticated. Based on George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, My Fair Lady originally premiered in 1956 on Broadway.
Actors Theatre of Indiana is performing the show with a minimal cast of 10 actors, rather than the 30 to 40 typically attributed to large musicals like My Fair Lady. Director Richard J Roberts said this will put the show right into the audience’s lap.
“It’s a very intimate production,” Roberts said. “It’s the Hamlet of musicals.”
The September 21 performance will feature a Talkback immediately following moderated by Indy Star writer Michael Anthony Adams, featuring Director, Richard J Roberts, the cast and actress and author Patricia Wilson. Wilson has previously acted in the Tony Award-winning Fiorello!, Take Me Along with Gene Kelly and A League of Their Own.
Although Wilson is not involved in the production of My Fair Lady, she will be answering questions about the world of theatre, including her 2009 book “Yesterday’s Mashed Potatoes: The Fabulous Life of a Happy Has-Been.”
Roberts has experience conducting theatre talkbacks for a number of years and enjoys the opportunity to showcase how a production like his comes together.
“Even Broadway shows are starting to do them,” Roberts said. “I think people are curious. People want to know how things are done. All kinds of shows on TV show how things are made. It’s fascinating. People think the arts are a foreign, distant world. We’re just people doing stuff.”
My Fair Lady will run this week from Sept.17-21 and next week from Sept. 24-28. For more information and tickets, go to actorstheatreofindiana.org or call the box office, 317.843.3800
Doug Trapp * (Henry Higgins)
Erin Oechsel (Eliza Doolittle)
Paul Hansen (Colonel Pickering)
Darrin Murrell * (Alfred P. Doolittle)
A.J. Morrison (Freddy Eynsford-Hill)
Cynthia Collins * (Mrs. Pearce, Mrs. Eynsford-Hill)
Vickie Cornelius Phipps (Mrs. Higgins, Mrs. Hopkins, Maid, et al…)
Joe Cameron (Harry, Butler, Boxington, et al…)
Michael Ferraro (Jamie, Footman, Chauffeur, et al…)
Katie Schuman (Neighbor, Maid, Lady Boxington, et al…)