My Fair Lady

My biggest part was a shocker; I hadn't expected to get the lead in a musical. All I can say is, "Thank you, Rex Harrison." After I saw the movie, a lot of the pressure was lifted; patter songs are the rap of the white man. I can do patter songs. I think I had to hit eight notes. Great! Steve got the Col. Pickering role to balance me, and Sparrow got Eliza. We had a bit of an extra in the billing because Miss Teen North Dakota '89 (and 5th runner-up in Miss Teen USA) Heidi Longseth got into the show playing my mother. Charleen got cast in a role that had one line, which Mrs. Brown later cut. I can't tell you how pissed she was over that one.

I had no idea what the show was about when we auditioned and it was cast; I saw the movie afterward. It didn't seem too bad, and actually managed to be quite fruitful for the school. It was almost sold out for almost every performance, and it was the only one of my career to beat Brighton Beach for attendance. We hadn't had that big of a crowd since The Wiz, before I got to Central. From what I understand, they haven't pulled a comparable crowd since.

If we were clique-oriented, it wasn't surprising. We had some semi-preps who did the musical as a status thing, the theatre regulars who didn't care what they did as long as they were involved, and some people who just wanted to see what it was all about. As much as we tried to integrate, you can't keep the social groups apart. I spent a lot of time on my own, brooding and pissed and depressed, and finally understood the last show thing. I couldn't fathom not having another one to do.

The two largest memories of this show both have to do with Sparrow. The first is rather comical: Our set was an ambiguous set of stairs and arches with small wheel-out platforms to be the study of the house. The back wall of the stair section didn't press perfectly up against the wall by the arches, so a small vertical split (about 1/2") existed near the stairs between the wall sections. At one point, Eliza, infuriated by Higgins (me), throws his slippers at him as he stands on the stairway. About 2 nights before we closed the show, Sparrow chucked one at me and the 1 in 1000 shot occurred: it disappeared into the crack between the wall sections. Her eyes got as big as her fists in horror, and a few titters floated in out of the audience. She faltered for a moment, then made to throw the other slipper, meaning this time to whip it downstage right, as far from me as possible. It slipped out of her hand early, and the 1 in 1000000 shot occurred as it too slipped into the half inch crevasse. The audience howled with laughter as I inspected the crack and turned back to her. She had this deer-in-the-headlights/please-don't-hurt-me look on her face, realizing I could destroy the audience with one well-honed comment. Instead, I ad-libbed "Only a woman!" and went on with the scene. It's on videotape.

The other memory is after curtain call, after the ensemble bow, as the curtain closed on the final performance. The split curtain swept together, killing the last beams from the spotlights, and as the dim ellipsoids lit up the stage area for us to exit, we just looked at each other, then hugged. We were there a few minutes while she cried a couple tears, then we went downstairs one final time.