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My Fair Lady
page 3
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Ascot Gavotte
I may have thought of it as a
"drawing room comedy", but I damn well knew that if you couldn't
pull off the costumes you may as well forget it. We were blessed with
three hard-working costume designers/creators/procurers: Mary Beth
Cooley, Joan Gang, and Jason Bird. They more than "pulled them
off", and another critical element fell nicely into place. Nobody
worked harder on, or contributed more to, the success of, "My Fair
Lady" than Joan, MB, and Jason.
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Zach
Colby as "Freddy"
I first
took notice of Zach in CPCT's "Broadway on Main II.
I was
already pushing to do "MFL", and his
clear and
assured tenor voice immediately
caught my
attention. A memorable and
commanding version of "On the Street Where You Live"
was one of those (many, many) things I just HAD to have.
I asked
him to audition.
He did.
He was
fabulous.
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Click
here to listen to:
On the
Street Where You Live
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Act One Finale (sort of)
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Act one as written ends with the
actual ballroom scene. Then, in the opening of Act Two, the song
"You Did It" details every last thing that happened in the
scene. Literally. Every. Last. Detail. I initially planned on doing the
ballroom scene (I cast the hilarious Brad Brown as Zoltan Karpathy),
but very early on in rehearsals the idea of dropping it became
appealing. The job of costuming our chorus for Ascot and the featured
characters for everything else was overwhelming, even for 3 costume
people. The show was already going to be long (it just IS, nothing you
can do about it), and it could be dropped without altering one line of
dialogue or having to explain anything (I couldn't confirm it, but I
would bet it was added after the fact to add grandeur to the show on
Broadway). Best of all, if you cut the scene, Act One ends with the
thoroughly satisfying climax of Higgins and Eliza's departure, crowned
by Eliza's emergence in her gown. Not a single person mentioned the
missing scene, and when Eliza entered in her gown the audiences audibly
gasped. Excellent end to the act. Ka-ching!
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